The slavery of our times

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THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

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THE .
SLAVERY
OF OUR .
TIMES

BY

LEO TOLSTOY

Translated from the Russian MS.

By AYLMER MAUDE

With Introduction by Translator .

(NO RIGHTS RESERVED)

THE FREE AGE PRESS

MALDON, ESSEX ....
1900

INTRODUCTION

BY AYLMER MAUDE

THIS little book shows, in a short, clear, and
systematic manner, how the principle of Non-
Kesistance, about which Tolstoy has written so
much, is related to economic and political life.

The great majority of men, without knowing
why, are constrained to labour long hours at
tasks they dislike, and often to live in unhealthy
conditions. It is not that man has so little
control over nature that to obtain a subsistence
it is necessary to work in this way, but because
men have made laws about land, taxes, and pro-
perty, which result in placing the great bulk of
the people in conditions which compel them to
labour thus, or go to the workhouse, or starve.

It may be said that man's nature is so bad
that were it not for these laws an even worse
state of things would exist ; that the laws we
make and tolerate are outward and visible signs
of an inward and spiritual disgrace the selfish-
ness of man, which is the real root of the evil.
But granting that, in a sense, this may be true,
we need not suppose man's nature to be im-
mutable, and all progress for ever impossible.
Nor need we suppose it our duty to leave pro-

6 INTRODUCTION

gress in the hands of some kind of a self-acting
evolution, whose operations we can only watch
as a passenger watches the working of a ship's
engines. We may consider the effect of the
laws we have made, approve or disapprove of
them, discern the direction in which it is possible
to advance, and take our part in furthering or
hampering that advance.

Laws are made by Governments, and are
enforced by physical violence. We have been
so long taught that it is good for some people to
make laws for others, that most men approve of
this. Just as " genteel " people have been known
to approve of wholesale while they turned up
their noses at retail business, so people in
general, while disapproving of robbery and
murder when done on a small scale, admire
them when they are organised, and when they
result in allotting most of the land on which forty
millions have to live to a few thousands, and in
periodically sending out thousands of men to kill
and to be killed. Nor are people much shocked
at isolated murders, the responsibility for which
is subdivided between the Queen, the hangman,
the judge, jury, and officials.

To Tolstoy's mind, violence done by man to
man is wrong. We cannot escape the wrong-
ness by doing it wholesale, or by subdividing the
responsibility.

But what would happen if we ceased to
abet it ?

INTRODUCTION 7

If it were possible forcibly to oblige men to
cease from using force, the selfishness which is
at the root of the matter would, no doubt, burst
out in some fresh form. That is, in fact, pretty
much what has happened : weary of strife and
private feuds, people consented to leave to
Governments the use of force. External peace
among individuals has ensued, but in place of
strife with club or sword, a new struggle almost
as fierce is carried on under legal and com-
mercial forms. Tolstoy's desire is not that people
should be compelled to cease from violence, but
that violence should become to them abhorrent,
and that they should not wish to sway others
more than they can be swayed by reason and by
sympathy. Were that accomplished, surely we
may trust that good would come of good, as now
ill comes of ill. At anyrate, as Tolstoy shows,
there is no other path of advance. We can
neither revert to the belief that to use violence
is a divine right of kings, nor can we maintain
the current belief that to do so is a divine right
of majorities. To be subjected by force to a rule
we disapprove of is slavery, and we are all slaves
or slave-owners (sometimes both together) as long
as our society bases itself on violence.

But can we abolish the use of violence, and
cease to imprison and kill our fellow-men ?

We can at least consider what Tolstoy says on
the matter, and realise that organised violence
exists claiming our approval, and that it is

8 INTRODUCTION

possible to withhold that approval. As for
abolishing violence it is for us not a question
of yes or no, but it is a question of more or less.
The amount of violence committed depends on
the amount of support the violators receive.
There are places where it is now impossible to
get anyone to become a hangman, and even in
England, comparatively brutal as we are, it
would be impossible to re-enact the penal code
of George m., under which 160 different crimes
were punishable with death. To shake ourselves
completely free from all share in violence, if we
are not quite ready to become martyrs, may seem
and does seem impossible. Tolstoy himself does
not profess to have ceased to use postage-stamps
which are issued, or the highway that is main-
tained, by a Government which collects taxes by
force ; but reforms come by men doing what they
can, not what they can't. It would be a very easy,
and a very silly, reply to the teaching of Jesus,
to say that as He tells us to be perfect, and we
can't be perfect, we can get no guidance from
His teaching. In the same way anyone who
wishes to be logical but not reasonable, may say
that as Tolstoy tells us to stand aside from all
violence, and as we cannot do so, his guidance is
useless. Tolstoy relies on his readers to use
common sense, and the common sense of the
matter is, that if we are so enmeshed in a system
based on violence, and if we ourselves are so
weak and faulty, that we cannot avoid being

INTRODUCTION 9

parties to acts of violence, we should avoid this
as much as we can.

The mind is more free than the body, let us,
at least, try to understand the truth of the
matter, and not excuse a vicious system in order
to shelter ourselves. When we have understood
the matter, let us not fear to speak out ; and
when we have confessed our views, let us try to
bring our lives more and more in harmony with
them.

To free ourselves from the perplexity pro-
duced by the dual standard of legality and of
right, would alone be an enormous gain. Take,
for instance, the drink traffic in England ; what
friction and waste of power has resulted from
the attempts to legislate on the matter. How
greatly brewers, distillers, and dealers have
gained in respectability by the fact that their
occupations were legal, if not right. And is it
not becoming evident that it is not by laws
that such evils as the drink trade can be met ?

But, we are told, people are so inconsiderate
and so wrong-headed that nothing but the strong
arm of the law will restrain them. To disturb
their respect for the law is dangerous.

Of course it is dangerous ! Every great
moral movement and every strong reform move-
ment has its very real dangers. A century and
a half after St. Francis of Assisi had stirred
Europe by his example of self-renunciation and
devotion to the service of others, such a crowd

to INTRODUCTION

of impudent mendicants shirking the drudgery
of a workaday world were preying on society
in his name, that Wyclif denounced them as
sturdy beggars, and strongly censured any " man
who gives alms to a begging friar."

History is apt to repeat itself in such matters,
and, no doubt, Tolstoy's views will be again and
again exploited by unworthy disciples. But is
humanity to stagnate because what is evil is so
easily grafted on what is good ? To think and
to move may be dangerous, but to stagnate is to
die ; and progress along the path of violence as
Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Eome, Spain, and many
other nations have shown is progress to de-
struction.

No doubt, too, many good people will be
shocked at Tolstoy's statement that " Laws are
rules made by people who govern by means of
organised violence." They will plead that, in
modern Governments, the administrative func-
tions are becoming more and more predominant,
and the coercive ones are falling more and more
into abeyance. But the reply is, that Govern-
ments need only drop these dwindling and
secondary functions in order to escape the criti-
cism here levelled at them. Governments which,
without insisting on having their services accepted,
are content to offer to organise society on a
voluntary basis killing no one, imprisoning no
one, and relying on reason and persuasion to make
their decrees prevail are not here attacked.

INTRODUCTION n

And whatever good-natured people may wish
to believe about Governments, the fact is that
existing Governments rely on force, and that
when they do not rely on force we do not call
them Governments, but voluntary associations.

That men concerned in governing others know
this, is shown all through history, and has been
again shown recently in South Africa. As long
as Kruger and his party had the armed force,
the Boer reform party, the miners, and even
Messrs. Beit, Ehodes, & Co., had to submit. In
the time of the Raid the question who, in future,
should make the laws, hung in the balance it
might be Kruger, or Rhodes, or somebody else ;
but it was sure to be the man, or men, who
could obtain the advantage of being allowed
openly, systematically, and unblushingly, to do
violence to those who disobeyed them. Men
who were organising the buccaneers one day,
might become (and may yet become) a " Govern-
ment " another day. In fact, just as in Sparta
it was considered immoral, not to thieve, but to
be caught thieving, so among modern moralists
(such as Paley) it has been gravely argued that
the morality of using violence against the men
in power depends on the chance of being suc-
cessful.

Tolstoy says that the systematic use of
organised violence lies at the root of the ills
from which our society suffers ; and while agree-
ing in the indictment Socialism brings against

i 2 INTRODUCTION

the present system, he points out that the
establishment of a Socialist State would involve
the enforcement of a fresh form of slavery
direct compulsion to labour. And if he is not
at one with the Socialists, neither is he at one
with the Eevolutionary party of Kussian Anar-
chists usually spoken of in England as " Nihilists."
They, indeed, are often very bitter in their
denunciations of Tolstoy, whose influence has
increased the moral repugnance felt for their
policy of assassination. Their accusation that
Tolstoy wishes to oppose despotism by mere
metaphysics is, however, met in the present work
by a direct and explicit appeal to conscientious
people not voluntarily to pay taxes to Govern-
ments which spend the money on organising
violence and murder.

This view of the duty of individuals towards
Governments has had exponents in our own
language. The saintly Quaker John Woolman
wrote in his journal in 1 7 5 7

" A few years past, money being made current
in our province for carrying on wars, and to be
called in again by taxes laid on the inhabitants,
my mind was often affected with the thoughts of
paying such taxes . . . there was in the depth
of my mind a scruple which I never could get
over ; and at certain times I was greatly dis-
tressed on that account. I believed that there
were some upright-hearted men who paid such
taxes, yet could not see that their example was a

INTRODUCTION 13

sufficient reason for me to do so, while I believe
that the spirit of truth required of me, as an
individual, to suffer patiently the distress of
goods, rather than pay actively." He found he
was not alone among the Friends of Philadelphia
in this matter.

Nearly a century later Henry Thoreau wrote
in his admirable essay on " Civil Disobedience "

" I heartily accept the motto ' That Govern-
ment is best which governs least ' ; and I should
like to see it acted up to more rapidly and
systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts
to this, which also I believe, ' That Government
is best which governs not at all ' ; and when
men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of
Government which they will have. . . .

" It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course,
to devote himself to the eradication of any, even
the most enormous wrong ; he may properly
have other concerns to engage him ; but it is his
duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if
he gives it no thought longer, not to give it
practically his support.

" I do not hesitate to say that those who call
themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually
withdraw their support, both in person and
property, from the Government of Massachusetts,
and not wait till they constitute a majority
of one, before they suffer the right to prevail
through them. I think it is enough if they have
God on their side, without waiting for that other

i 4 INTRODUCTION

one. Moreover, any man more right than his
neighbours constitutes a majority of one already."

Holding these views, he refused to pay the
poll-tax, and was put in prison for one night,
till someone paid the tax for him much to his
disgust.

Tolstoy, therefore, is in good company in
holding the view that it were better to offer a
passive resistance to Governments than volun-
tarily to pay what they demand and misapply.
Such refusals might bring about the bloodless
revolution of which Thoreau spoke

" If a thousand men were not to pay their tax
bills this year, that would not be a violent and
bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and
enable the State to commit violence and shed
innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of
a peaceful revolution, if any such is possible. If
the tax-gatherer or any other public officer asks
me, as one has done, ' But what shall I do ? ' my
answer is, ' If you really wish to do anything,
resign your office.' When the subject has
refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned
his office, then the revolution is accomplished."

But while we remember that Tolstoy is in
good company in this matter, and that he here
offers just what some people pine for something
definite and decided to do or to refuse to do we
shall, I think, make a sad mistake if we fail to dif-
ferentiate between the main intention and drift of
his work, and such a piece of practical advice as this.

INTRODUCTION 15

The main intention and drift of the work is to
show that progress in human well-being can only
be achieved by relying more and more on reason
and conscience, and less and less on man-made
laws ; that we must be ready to sacrifice the
material progress we have been taught to esteem
so highly, rather than acquiesce in such injustice
and inequality as is flagrant among us to-day ;
that what we desire is the supremacy of truth
and goodness, and that consequently violence from
man to man must more and more be recognised
as evil, whether it boasts itself in high places
or lurks in slums and that we must more and
more free ourselves from the taint of murder that
clings to all robes of state.

These things, to my mind, seem certainly true ;
we must turn our back on the religion of Jesus
if we would rebut them.

But as soon as it comes to any definite precept
and external rule to do this, or not to do that
there is room for reply. What is really needed,
and what Tolstoy is aiming at, is that mankind
should steadily advance towards perfection, and
no one action can be the next step for all men in
all places. So when we come to the injunction
to pay no tax, we may remember the passage
(Matt. xvii. 2427) in which Jesus is reported to
have told Peter to catch fish and pay the tax for
them both. The passage seems to mean : " We
are in no way bound to pay, but if they demand
the tax of you, give it, not because you are under

16 INTRODUCTION

any obligation, but because we must not resist
him that is evil. If any man would take your
cloak, give him your coat also." And that is
what Tolstoy thought it meant when he wrote
The Four Gospels.

In the present work, however, he is not inter-
preting the Gospels, but is dealing with present
problems on the plane of thought of the jurists
and the economists. And whatever may be the
best method of undermining the authority of the
prince of this world, his condemnation by Jesus
makes in the same direction as Thoreau's " Civil
Disobedience " and Tolstoy's theory of " Non-
Eesistance." Each in his own way says, " The
kings of the Gentiles have lordship over them ;
and they that have authority over them are
called Benefactors. But ye shall not be so : but
he that is the greater among you, let him become
as the younger ; and he that is chief, as he that
doth serve" (Luke xxii. 25, 26).

The prince of this world is judged, the change
foreshadowed is a vast one, and must commence
with a change of each man's inner self. But its
outward manifestations may be as various as the
flowers of the field which are all fed by the same
rain and sunshine from above.

GREAT BADDOW, CHELMSFORP,
October 1900.

CONTENTS

PAGE
PHOTOGRAPH OF LEO TOLSTOY, WITH FACSIMILE

AUTOGRAPH .... Frontispiece

INTRODUCTION BY AYLMER MAUDE . . 5

AUTHOR'S PREFACE . . . . . 19

EPIGRAPHS . . . . . .21

CHAP.

I. GOODS-PORTERS WHO WORK THIRTY-SEVEN HOURS 23

ii. SOCIETY'S INDIFFERENCE WHILE MEN PERISH . 30

III. JUSTIFICATION OF THE EXISTING SYSTEM BY

SCIENCE . , . . . .34

IV. THE ASSERTION OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE THAT ALL

RURAL LABOURERS MUST ENTER THE FACTORY
SYSTEM . . . . . .39

V. WHY LEARNED ECONOMISTS AFFIRM WHAT IS

FALSE ...... 48

VI. BANKRUPTCY OF THE SOCIALIST IDEAL . . 52

VII. CULTURE OR FREEDOM . . . .59

VIII. SLAVERY EXISTS AMONG TS . . .65

IX. WHAT IS SLAVERY? . . . .71

2

i8 CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGB

X. LAWS CONCERNING TAXES, LAND, AND PROPERTY 75

XI. LAWS THE CAUSE OF SLAVERY . . .83
XII. THE ESSENCE OF LEGISLATION IS ORGANISED

VIOLENCE . . . . .88

XIII. WHAT ABE GOVERNMENTS ? IS IT POSSIBLE TO

EXIST WITHOUT GOVERNMENTS ? . .93

XIV. HOW CAN GOVERNMENTS BE ABOLISHED? . .103

XV. WHAT SHOULD EACH MAN DO? . . .115

AN AFTERWORD 125

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

" They that take the sword shall perish with the sword."

NEARLY fifteen years ago the census in Moscow
evoked in me a series of thoughts and feelings
which I expressed, as best I could, in a book
called What Must We Do Then? Towards the
end of last year (1899) I once more reconsidered
the same questions, and the conclusions to which
I came were the same as in that book. But, as
I think that during these fifteen years I have re-
flected on the questions discussed in What Must
We Do Then ? more quietly and minutely, in
relation to the teachings at present existing and
diffused among us, I now offer the reader new con-
siderations leading to the same replies as before.
I think these considerations may be of use to
people who are honestly trying to elucidate their
position in society, and to clearly define the
moral obligations flowing from that position. I
therefore publish them.

The fundamental thought, both of that book

19

ao AUTHOR'S PREFACE

and of this, is the repudiation of violence.
That repudiation I learnt, and understood, from
the Gospels, where it is most clearly expressed
in the words, " It was said to you, An eye for
an eye," . . . i.e. you have been taught to oppose
violence by violence, but I teach you : turn the
other cheek when you are struck ; i.e. suffer viol-
ence, but do not employ it. I know that the
use of those great words in consequence of the
unreflectingly perverted interpretations alike of
Liberals and of Churchmen, who on this matter
agree will be a reason for most so-called cul-
tured people not to read this article, or to be
biassed against it ; but nevertheless I place those
words as the epigraph of this work.

I cannot prevent people who consider them-
selves enlightened, from considering the gospel
teaching to be an obsolete guide to life a guide
long outlived by humanity. But I can indicate
the source from which I drew my consciousness
of a truth which people are yet far from recog-
nising, and which alone can save men from their
sufferings. And this I do

Uth July 1900.

YE have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth
for a tooth. Matt. v. 38 ; Ex. xxi. 24.

But I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil : but whoso-
ever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other
also. Matt. v. 39.

And if any man would go to law with thee, and take away
thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. Matt. v. 40.

Give to every one that asketh thee ; and of him that taketh
away thy goods ask them not again. Luke vi. 30.

And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to
them likewise. Luke vi. 31.

And all that believed were together, and had all things
common. Acts ii. 44.

And Jesus said, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair
weather : for the heaven is red. Matt. xvi. 2.

And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day : for the
heaven is red and lowring. Ye hypocrites, ye know how to
discern the face of the heaven ; but ye cannot discern the
signs of the times. Matt. xvi. 3.

The system on which all the nations of the world are acting,
is founded in gross deception, in the deepest ignorance, or a
mixture of both : so that under no possible modification of
the principles on which it is based can it ever produce good
to man ; on the contrary, its practical results must ever be to
produce evil continually. ROBEET OWEX.

We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the
great civilised invention of the division of labour ; only we give
it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is
divided, but the men : Divided into mere segments of men
broken into small fragments and crumbs of life ; so that all the
little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough
21

to make a pin or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the
point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and
desirable thing, truly, to make many pins a day ; but if we
could only see with what crystal sand their points were
polished, sand of human souls, we should think there
might be some loss in it also.

Men may be beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like cattle,
slaughtered like summer flies, and yet remain in one sense,
and the best sense, free. But to smother their souls within
them, to blight and hew into rotting pollards the suckling
branches of their human intelligence, to make the flesh and
skin . . . into leathern thongs to yoke machinery with,
this is to be slave -masters indeed. ... It is verily this
degradation of the operative into a machine, which is leading
the mass of the nations into vain, incoherent, destructive
struggling for a freedom of which they cannot explain the
nature to themselves. Their universal outcry against wealth,
and against nobility, is not forced from them either by the
pressure of famine or the sting of mortified pride. These do
much and have done much in all ages ; but the foundations of
society were never yet shaken as they are at this day.

It is not that men are ill-fed, but that they have no pleasure
in the work by which they make their bread, and therefore
look to wealth as the only means of pleasure.

It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upper
classes, but they cannot endure their own ; for they feel that
the kind of labour to which they are condemned is verily a
degrading one, and makes them less than men. Never had
the upper classes so much sympathy with the lower, or charity
for them, as they have at this day, and yet never were they so
much hated by them. From The, Stones of Venice, by John
Ruskin, vol. ii. chap. vi. 13-16.

THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

CHAPTEE I

GOODS-PORTEKS WHO WORK THIRTY-
SEVEN HOURS

AN acquaintance of mine, who serves on the
Moscow-Kursk Railway as a weigher, in the
course of conversation mentioned to me that
the men who load the goods on to his scales
work for thirty-six hours on end.

Though I had full confidence in the speaker's
truthfulness, I was unable to believe him. I
thought he was making a mistake, or exaggerat-
ing, or that I misunderstood something.

But the weigher narrated the conditions under
which this work is done, so exactly that there was
no room left for doubt. He told me that there
are two hundred and fifty such goods-porters at
the Kursk Station in Moscow. They were all
divided into gangs of five men, and were on

23

24 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

piece-work, receiving from 1 rouble to K. 1.15
(say 2s. to 2s. 4d.) for one thousand poods (over
sixteen tons) of goods received or despatched.

They come in the morning, work all day and
all night at unloading the trucks, and, when the
night is ended, they again begin to reload, and
then work on for another day. So that in two
days they get one night's sleep.

Their work consists of unloading and moving
bales of seven, eight, and up to ten poods (say
eighteen, twenty, and up to nearly twenty-six
stone). Two men place the bales on the backs
of the other three, who carry them. By such
work they earn less than a rouble (2s.) a day.
They work continually, without holidays.

The account given by the weigher was so
circumstantial that it was impossible to doubt
it ; but, nevertheless, I decided to verify it with
my own eyes, and I went to the Goods Station.

Finding my acquaintance at the Goods Station,
I told him I had come to see what he had told
me about.

" No one I mention it to believes it," said I.

Without replying to me, the weigher called to
someone in a shed : " Nikita, come here."

From the door appeared a tall, lean workman
in a torn coat.

" When did you begin work ? "

" When ? Yesterday morning."

" And where were you last night ? "

GOODS-PORTERS' HOURS 25

" I was unloading, of course."

" Did you work during the night ? " asked I.

" Of course we worked."

" And when did you begin work to-day ? "

" We began in the morning when else should
we begin ? "

" And when will you finish working ? "

" When they let us go ; then we finish ! "

The four other workmen of his gang came up
to us. They all wore torn coats and were with-
out overcoats, though there were about twenty
degrees Be"aumur of cold (thirteen degrees below
zero, Fahrenheit).

I began to ask them about the conditions of
their work, and evidently surprised them by
taking an interest in such a simple and natural
thing (as it seemed to them) as their thirty-six-
hour work.

They were all villagers ; for the most part
fellow-countrymen of my own, from Tula. Some,
however, were from Orla, and some from Voronesh.
They lived in Moscow in lodgings ; some of them
with their families, but most of them without.
Those who have come here alone send their
earnings home to the village.

They board with contractors. Their food costs
them Es. 10 (say 1, Is.) per month. They
always eat meat, disregarding the fasts.

Their work always keeps them occupied more
than thirty-six hours running, because it takes

26 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

more than half an hour to get to their lodgings
and from their lodgings ; and besides, they are
often kept at work beyond the time fixed.

Paying for their own food, they earn by
such thirty-seven-hour-on-end work about Es. 25
(2, 12s. 6d.) a month.

To my question, " Why they did such convict
work ? " they replied

" Where is one to go to ? "

" But why work thirty-six hours on end ?
Cannot the work be arranged in shifts ? "

" We do what we're told to."

" Yes ; but why do you agree to it ? "

" We agree because we have to feed ourselves.
' If you don't like it, be off.' If one's even an
hour late, one has one's ticket shied at one, and
are told to march ; and there are ten men ready
to take the place."

The men were all young ; only one was some-
what older, perhaps about forty. All their faces
were lean, and had exhausted, weary eyes, as
though the men were drunk. The lean workman
to whom I first spoke struck me especially by
the strange weariness of his look. I asked him
whether he had not been drinking to-day ?

" I don't drink," answered he, in the decided
way in which men who really do not drink
always reply to that question.

" And I do not smoke," added he.

" Do the others drink ? " asked I.

GOODS-PORTERS' HOURS 27

" Yes, it's brought here."

""The work is not light, and a drink always
adds to one strength," said the older workman.

This man had been drinking that day, but it
was not in the least noticeable.

After some more talk with the workmen, I
went to watch the work.

Passing long rows of all sorts of goods, I came
to some workmen slowly pushing a loaded truck.
I learned afterwards that the men have to shunt
the trucks themselves, and to keep the platform
clear of snow, without being paid for the work.
It is so stated in the " Conditions of Pay." These
workmen were just as tattered and emaciated as
those with whom I had been talking. When
they had moved the truck to its place, I went up
to them and asked when they had begun work,
and when they had dined.

I was told that they started work at seven
o'clock, and had only just dined. The work had
prevented their being let off sooner.

" And when do you get away ? "

" As it happens ; sometimes not till ten
o'clock," replied the men, as if boasting of their
endurance. Seeing my interest in their position,
they surrounded me, and probably taking me for
an inspector, several of them, speaking at once,
informed me of what was evidently their chief
subject of complaint, namely, that the apartment
in which they could sometimes warm themselves,

28 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

and snatch an hour's sleep between the day-work
and the night-work, was crowded. All of them
expressed great dissatisfaction at this crowding.

" There may be one hundred men, and no-
where to lie down even under the shelves it is
crowded," said dissatisfied voices. " Have a look
at it yourself it is close here."

The room was certainly not large enough. In
the thirty-six foot room, about forty men might
find place to lie down on the shelves.

Some of the men entered the room with me,
and they vied with each other in complaining of
the scantiness of the accommodation.

" Even under the shelves there is nowhere to
lie down," said they.

These men who in twenty degrees of frost,
without overcoats, carry on their backs twenty
stone loads during thirty-six hours ; who dine
and sup, not when they need food, but when
their overseer allows them to eat ; who live alto-
gether in conditions far worse than those of dray-
horses it seemed strange that these people only
complained of insufficient accommodation in the
room where they warm themselves. But though
this seemed to me strange at first, yet, entering
further into their position, I understood what a
feeling of torture these men, who never get
enough sleep and who are half-frozen, must ex-
perience when, instead of resting and being
warmed, they have to creep on the dirty floor

GOODS-PORTERS' HOURS

29

under the shelves, and there, in stuffy and viti-
ated air, become yet weaker and more broken
clown.

Only, perhaps, in that miserable hour of vain
attempt to get rest and sleep do they painfully
realise all the horror of their life-destroying
thirty-seven-hour work, and that is why they
are specially agitated by such an apparently
insignificant circumstance as the overcrowding
of their room.

Having watched several gangs at work, and
having talked with some more of the men, and
heard the same story from them all, I drove
home, convinced that what my acquaintance had
told me was true.

It was true, that for a bare subsistence,
people, considering themselves free men, thought
it necessary to give themselves up to work such
as, in the days of serfdom, not one slave-owner,
however cruel, would have sent his slaves to.
Let alone slave-owners, not one cab proprietor
would send his horses to such work, for horses
cost money, and it would be wasteful, by ex-
cessive thirty-seven-hour work, to shorten the
life of an animal of value.

CHAPTER II

SOCIETY'S INDIFFERENCE WHILE MEN PEKISH

To oblige men to work for thirty-seven hours
continuously without sleep, besides being cruel, is
also uneconomical. And yet such uneconomical
expenditure of human lives continually goes on
around us.

Opposite the house in which I live l is a silk-
factory, built with the latest technical im-
provements. About three thousand women and
seven hundred men work and live there. As
I sit in my room now, I hear the unceasing
din of the machinery, and know for I have
been there what that din means. Three
thousand women stand, for twelve hours a day,
at the looms, amid a deafening roar ; winding,
unwinding, arranging the silk threads to make
silk stuffs. All the women (except those who
have just come from the villages) have an un-
healthy appearance. Most of them lead a most
intemperate and immoral life. Almost all,

1 This evidently relates to his wife's house in Moscow, where

Tolstoy spends the winter months. (Trans.).
30

SOCIETY'S INDIFFERENCE 31

whether married or unmarried, as soon as a
child is born to them, send it oft' either to the
village or to the Foundlings' Hospital where
80 per cent, of these children perish. For fear
of losing their places, the mothers resume work
the next day, or on the third day, after their
confinement.

So that during twenty years, to my know-
ledge, tens of thousands of young, healthy women
mothers have ruined, and are now ruining,
their lives, and the lives of their children, in
order to produce velvets and silk stuffs.

I met a beggar yesterday, a young man on
crutches, sturdily built, but crippled. He used
to work as a navvy, with a wheelbarrow, but
slipped and injured himself internally. He spent
all he had on peasant women healers and on
doctors, and has now for eight years been home-
less, begging his bread, and complaining that
God does not send him death.

How many such sacrifices of life there are,
that we either know nothing of, or know of, but
hardly notice considering them inevitable.

I know men working at the blast furnaces of
the Tula Iron Foundry, who, to have one Sunday
free each fortnight, will work for twenty-four
hours ; that is, after working all day, they will
go on working all night. I have seen these
men. They all drink vddka to keep up their
energy ; and, obviously, like those goods-porters on

32 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

the railway, they quickly expend not the interest,
but the capital of their lives.

And what of the waste of lives among those
who are employed on admittedly harmful work :
in looking-glass, card, match, sugar, tobacco, and
glass factories; in mines, or as cesspool cleaners.

There are English statistics showing that the
average length of life among people of the upper
classes is fifty-five years, and the average of life
among working people in unhealthy occupations
is twenty-nine years.

Knowing this (and we cannot help knowing
it), we, who take advantage of labour that thus
costs human lives should, one would think
(unless we are beasts), not be able to enjoy a
moment's peace. But the fact is that we well-
to-do people, Liberals and Humanitarians, very
sensitive to the sufferings not of people only but
also of animals unceasingly make use of such
labour, and try to become more and more rich,
i.e. to take more and more advantage of such
work. And we remain perfectly tranquil.

For instance, having learned of the thirty -
seven-hour labour of the goods-porters and of
their bad room, we at once send there an inspector
(who receives a good salary), and we forbid people
to work more than twelve hours, leaving the
workmen (who are thus deprived of one-third of
their earnings) to feed themselves as best they
can ; and we compel the Eailway Company to

SOCIETY'S INDIFFERENCE 33

erect a large and convenient room for the work-
men. Then with perfectly quiet consciences we
continue to receive and despatch goods by that
railway, and we ourselves continue to receive
salaries, dividends, rents from houses or from
land, etc. Having learned that the women and
girls at the silk factory, living far from their
families, ruin their own lives and those of their
children ; and that a large half of the washer-
women who iron our starched shirts, and of the
type-setters who print the books and papers that
wile away our time, get consumption we only
shrug our shoulders and say that we are very
sorry things should be so, but that we can do
nothing to alter it ; and we continue with
tranquil consciences to buy silk stuffs, to wear
starched shirts, and to read our morning paper.
We are much concerned about the hours of the
shop assistants, and still more about the long
hours of our own children at school ; we strictly
forbid carters to make their horses drag heavy
loads, and we even organise the killing of cattle
in slaughter-houses so that the animals may
feel it as little as possible. But how wonder-
fully blind we become as soon as the question
concerns those millions of workers who perish
slowly, and often painfully, all around us, at
labours the fruits of which we use for our con-
venience and pleasure.

CHAPTEE III

JUSTIFICATION OF THE EXISTING SYSTEM
BY SCIENCE

THIS wonderful blindness which befalls people of
our circle can only be explained by the fact that
when people behave badly they always invent a
philosophy of life which represents their bad
actions to be not bad actions at all, but merely
results of unalterable laws beyond our control.
In former times such a view of life was found
in the theory that an inscrutable and unalterable
will of God existed which foreordained to some
men a humble position and hard work, and to
others an exalted position and the enjoyment of
the good things of life.

On this theme an enormous quantity of books
were written, and an innumerable quantity of
sermons preached. The theme was worked up
from every possible side. It was demonstrated
that God created different sorts of people: slaves
and masters; and that both should be satisfied
with their position. It was further demonstrated
that it would be better for the slaves in the next

34

JUSTIFICATION OF THE SYSTEM 35

world ; and afterwards it was shown that although
the slaves were slaves, and ought to remain such,
yet their condition would not be bad if the
masters would be kind to them. Then the very
last explanation, after the emancipation of the
slaves, 1 was that wealth is entrusted by God
to some people in order that they may use
part of it in good works ; and so there is no
harm in some people being rich and others
poor.

These explanations satisfied the rich and the
poor (especially the rich) for a long time. But
the day came when these explanations became
unsatisfactory, especially to the poor, who began
to understand their position. Then fresh ex-
planations were needed. And, just at the proper
time, they were produced. 2 These new explana-
tions came in the form of science : political
economy, which declared that it had discovered
the laws which regulate the division of labour
and the distribution of the products of labour
among men. These laws, according to that
science, are : that the division of labour and the
enjoyment of its products depend on supply
and demand, on capital, rent, wages of labour,

1 The serfs in Russia and the slaves in the United States of
America were emancipated at the same time 1861-64.
(Trans.).

2 The first volume of Karl Marx's Kapital appeared in 1867.
(Trans.).

36 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

values, profits, etc. ; in general, on unalterable
laws governing man's economic activities.

Soon, on this theme as many books and
pamphlets were written and lectures delivered
as there had been treatises written and religious
sermons preached on the former theme ; and still,
unceasingly, mountains of pamphlets and books
are being written, and lectures are being de-
livered ; and all these books and lectures are
as cloudy and unintelligible as the theological
treatises and sermons ; and they too, like the
theological treatises, fully achieve their appointed
purpose, i.e. they give such an explanation of the
existing order of things as justifies some people
in tranquilly refraining from labour and in
utilising the labour of others.

The fact that, for the investigation of this
pseudo-science, there was taken to show the
general order of things, not the condition of
people in the whole world, through all historic
time, but only the condition of people in a small
country, in most exceptional circumstances
England at the end of the eighteenth and the
beginning of the nineteenth centuries l this

1 Compare Walter Bagehot's words

"The world which our political economists treat of is a very
limited and peculiar world also. They (people) often imagine
that what they read is applicable to all states of society, and
to all equally ; whereas it is only true of and only proved as
to states of society in which commerce has largely developed,
and where it has taken the form of development, or something

JUSTIFICATION OF THE SYSTEM 37

fact did not in the least hinder the acceptance
as valid of the results to which the investigators
arrived, any more than a similar acceptance is
now hindered by the endless disputes and dis-
agreements among those who study that science
and are quite unable to agree as to the mean-
ing of rent, surplus value, profits, etc. Only
the one fundamental position of that science is
acknowledged by all, namely, that the relations
among men are conditioned, not by what people
consider right or wrong, but by what is advan-
tageous for those who occupy an advantageous
position.

It is admitted as an undoubted truth, that if
in society many thieves and robbers have sprung
up, who take from the labourers the fruits of
their labour, this happens not because the thieves
and robbers have acted badly, but because such
are the inevitable economic laws, which can only
be altered slowly, by an evolutionary process
indicated by science ; and therefore, according to
the guidance of science, people belonging to the
class of robbers, thieves, or receivers of stolen
goods, may quietly continue to utilise the things
obtained by theft and robbery.

Though the majority of people in our world do
not know the details of these tranquillising scien-
tific explanations, any more than they formerly

near the form, which it has taken in England." The Postul-
ates of Political Economy. (Trans.).

38 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

knew the details of the theological explanations
which justified their position, yet they all know
that an explanation exists ; that scientific men,
wise men, have proved convincingly, and con-
tinue to prove, that the existing order of things
is what it ought to be, and that therefore we
may live quietly in this order of things without
ourselves trying to alter it.

Only in this way can I explain the amazing
blindness of good people of our society, who
sincerely desire the welfare of animals, but yet
with quiet consciences devour the lives of their
brother-men.

CHAPTEE IV

THE ASSERTION OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE THAT ALL
EURAL LABOURERS MUST ENTER THE FACTORY
SYSTEM

THE theory that it is God's will that some people
should own others, satisfied people for a very
long time. But that theory, by justifying
cruelty, caused such cruelty as evoked resist-
ance, and produced doubts as to the truth of
the theory.

So now with the theory that an economic
evolution, guided by inevitable laws, is progress-
ing, in consequence of which some people must
collect capital, and others must labour all their
lives to increase those capitals, preparing them-
selves meanwhile for the promised communalisa-
tion of the means of production ; this theory,
causing some people to be yet more cruel to
others, also begins (especially among common
people not stupefied by science) to evoke certain
doubts.

For instance, you see goods-porters destroying
their lives by thirty-seven-hour labour, or women

39

40 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

in factories, or laundresses, or type-setters, or all
those millions of people who live in hard, unna-
tural conditions of monotonous, stupefying, slavish
toil, and you naturally ask : what has brought
these people to such a state ? and how are they
to be delivered from it ? And science replies,
that these people are in this condition because the
railway belongs to this Company, the silk factory
to that gentleman, and all the foundries, factories,
printing shops, and laundries, to capitalists ; and
that this state of things will come right by
workpeople forming unions, co-operative societies,
strikes, and taking part in government, and
more and more swaying the masters and the
government, till the workers obtain first, shorter
hours and increased wages, and finally, all the
means of production into their hands ; and then
all will be well. Meanwhile all is going on as
it should go, and there is no need to alter any-
thing.

This answer must seem to an unlearned man,
and particularly to our Eussian folk, very surpris-
ing. In the first place, neither in relation to the
goods-porters nor the factory women, nor all
the millions of other labourers suffering from
heavy, unhealthy, stupefying labour, does the
possession of the means of production by capi-
talists explain anything. The agricultural means
of production of those men who are now working
at the railway have not been seized by capitalists :

THE FACTORY SYSTEM 41

they have land, and horses, and ploughs, and
harrows, and all that is necessary to till the
ground ; also these women working at the factory
are not only not forced to it by being deprived
of their implements of production, but, on the
contrary, they have (for the most part against
the wish of the elder members of their families)
left the homes where their work was much
wanted, and where they had implements of pro-
duction.

Millions of workpeople in Eussia, and in other
countries, are in like case. So that the cause of
the miserable position of the workers cannot be
found in the seizure of the means of production
by capitalists. The cause must lie in that which
drives them from the villages. That in the first
place. Secondly, the emancipation of the workers
from this state of things (even in that distant
future in which science promises them liberty)
can be accomplished neither by shortening the
hours of labour, nor by increasing wages, nor by
the promised communalisation of the means of
production.

All that, cannot improve their position. For
the labourers' misery alike on the railway, in
the silk-factory, and in every other factory or
workshop consists not in the longer or shorter
hours of work (agriculturists sometimes work
eighteen hours a day, and as much as thirty-six
hours on end, and consider their lives happy

42 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

ones) ; nor does it consist in the low rate of wages,
nor in the fact that the railway or the factory is
not theirs ; but it consists in the fact that they
are obliged to work in harmful, unnatural con-
ditions, often dangerous and destructive to life,
and to live a barrack life in towns a life full
of temptations and immorality and to do com-
pulsory labour at another's bidding.

Latterly the hours of labour have diminished,
and the rate of wages has increased ; but this
diminution of the hours of labour and this in-
crease in wages has not improved the position
of the worker, if one takes into account not their
more luxurious habits watches with chains, silk
kerchiefs, tobacco, vddka, beef, beer, etc. but
their true welfare, i.e. their health and morality,
and chiefly their freedom.

At the silk-factory with which I am acquainted,
twenty years ago the work was chiefly done by
men, who worked fourteen hours a day, earned on
an average fifteen roubles a month, and sent the
money, for the most part, to their families in the
villages. Now, nearly all the work is done by
women, working eleven hours, some of whom earn
as much as twenty-five roubles a month (over
fifteen roubles on the average), and, for the most
part, do not send it home, but spend all they
earn here, chiefly on dress, drunkenness, and vice.
The diminution of the hours of work merely
increases the time they spend in the taverns.

THE FACTORY SYSTEM 43

The same thing is happening, to a greater or
lesser extent, at all the factories and works.
Everywhere, notwithstanding the diminution of
the hours of labour and the increase of wages,
the health of the operatives is worse than that of
country workers, the average duration of life is
shorter, and morality is sacrificed, as cannot but
occur when people are torn from those conditions
which most conduce to morality : family life,
and free, healthy, varied, and intelligible agricul-
tural work

It is very possibly true, as some economists
assert, that with shorter hours of labour, more
pay, and improved sanitary conditions in mills
and factories, the health and morality of the
workers improve, in comparison with the former
condition of factory workers. It is possible also
that latterly, and in some places, the position of
the factory hands is better in external conditions
than the position of the country population.
But this is so (and only in some places) because
the Government and society, influenced by the
affirmations of science, do all that is possible
to improve the position of the factory popu-
lation at the expense of the country popula-
tion.

If the condition of the factory workers, in
some places, is (though only in externals) better
than that of country people, it only shows that
one can, by all kinds of restrictions, render life

44 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

miserable, in what should be the best external
conditions ; and that there is no position so
unnatural and bad that men may not adapt
themselves to it, if they remain in it for some
generations.

The misery of the position of a factory hand,
and in general of a town worker, does not consist
in his long hours and small pay, but in the fact
that he is deprived of the natural conditions of
life in touch with nature, is deprived of freedom,
and is compelled to compulsory and monotonous
toil at another man's will.

And therefore the reply to the questions, why
factory and town workers are in miserable con-
ditions, and how those may be improved, cannot
be, that this arises because capitalists have pos-
sessed themselves of the means of production, and
that the workers' condition will be improved : by
diminishing their hours of work, increasing their
wages, and communalising the means of produc-
tion.

The reply to these questions must consist in
indicating the causes which have deprived the
workers of natural conditions of life in touch
with nature, and have driven them into factory
bondage ; and in indicating means to free the
workers from the necessity of foregoing a free
country life, and from going into slavery at the
factories.

And therefore the question why town workers

THE FACTORY SYSTEM 45

are in a miserable condition, includes, first of all,
the question : what reasons have driven them
from the villages, where they and their ancestors
have lived and might live; where, in Eussia,
people such as they do still live ? and what it
is that drove, and continues to drive them, against
their will, to the factories and works ?

If there are workmen, as in England, Belgium,
or Germany, who for some generations have
lived by factory work, even they live so, not
at their own free will but because their fathers,
grandfathers, and great-grandfathers were, in some
way, compelled to exchange the agricultural
life which they loved, for life which seemed to
them hard in towns and at factories. First the
country people were deprived of land by violence,
says Karl Marx, were evicted and brought to
vagabondage ; and then, by cruel laws, they were
tortured with pincers, with red-hot irons, and
were whipped, to make them submit to the
condition of being hired labourers. Therefore
the question, how to free the workers from their
miserable position, should, one would think,
naturally lead to the question, how to remove
those causes which have already driven some,
and are now driving, and threatening to drive,
the rest of the peasants from the position which
they considered and consider good, and have
driven and are driving them to a position which
they consider bad.

46 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

Economic science, although it indicates in
passing the causes that drove the peasants from
the villages, does not concern itself with the
question how to remove these causes, but directs
all its attention to the improvement of the
worker's position in the existing factories and
works, assuming as it were that the workers'
position in these factories and workshops is
something unalterable, something which must
at all costs be maintained for those who are
already in the factories, and must be reached
by those who have not yet left the villages or
abandoned agricultural work.

Moreover, economic science is so sure that all
the peasants have inevitably to become factory
operatives in towns, that though all the sages
and the poets of the world have always placed
the ideal of human happiness amid conditions
of agricultural work, though all the workers
whose habits are unperverted have always pre-
ferred, and still prefer, agricultural labour to
any other, though factory work is always un-
healthy and monotonous, while agriculture is
most healthy and varied, though agricultural
work is free, 1 i.e. the peasant alternates toil and
rest at his own will, while factory work, even if
the factory belongs to the workmen, is always

1 In Eussia, as in many other countries, the greater part of
the agricultural work still is done by peasants working their
own land on their own account. (Trans.).

THE FACTORY SYSTEM 47

enforced, in dependence on the machines, though
factory work is derivative, while agricultural work
is fundamental, and without it no factory could
exist, yet economic science affirms that all the
country people, not only are not injured by the
transition from the country to the town, but
themselves desire it, and strive towards it.

CHAPTEK V

WHY LEARNED ECONOMISTS AFFIRM WHAT
IS FALSE

HOWEVER obviously unjust may be the assertion
of the men of science that the welfare of
humanity must consist in the very thing that
is profoundly repulsive to human feelings in
monotonous, enforced factory labour the men
of science were inevitably led to make this ob-
viously unjust assertion, just as the theologians
of old were inevitably led to make the equally
evidently unjust assertion that slaves and their
masters were creatures differing in kind, and that
the inequality of their position in this world
would be compensated in the next.

The cause of this evidently unjust assertion
is that those who have formulated, and who are
formulating, the laws of science, belong to the
well-to-do classes, and are so accustomed to the
conditions, advantageous for themselves, in which
they live, that they do not admit the thought that
society could exist under other conditions.

The condition of life to which people of the

48

ECONOMISTS AFFIRM WHAT IS FALSE 49

well-to-do classes are accustomed, is that of an
abundant production of various articles, necessary
for their comfort and pleasure ; and these things
are only obtained thanks to the existence of
factories and works organised as at present.
And therefore, when discussing the improvement
of the workers' position, men of science, belong-
ing to the well-to-do classes, always have in
view only such improvements as will not do
away with this system of factory production,
and those conveniences of which they avail
themselves.

Even the most advanced economists the
socialists, who demand the complete control of
the means of production, for the workers
expect production of the same, or almost of the
same, articles, as are produced now, to continue in
the present^ or similar, factories, with the present
division of labour.

The difference, as they imagine it, will only
be that, in the future, not they alone, but all
men, will make use of such conveniences as only
they now enjoy. They dimly picture to them-
selves that, with the communalisation of the
means of production, they too men of science,
and the ruling classes in general will do some
work, but chiefly as managers, designers, scientists,
or artiats. To the questions, who will have to
wear a muzzle and make white-lead ? who will
be stokers ? miners ? and cesspool cleaners ? they
4

50 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

are either silent, or foretell that all these things
will be so improved that even work at cess-
pools, and underground, will afford pleasant
occupation. That is how they represent to
themselves future economic conditions, both in
Utopias such as that of Bellamy and in
scientific works.

According to their theories, the workers will
all join unions and associations, and cultivate
solidarity among themselves by unions, strikes,
and participation in Parliament, till they obtain
possession of all the means of production, as well
as the land ; and then they will be so well fed,
so well dressed, and enjoy such amusements on
holidays, that they will prefer life in town, amid
brick buildings and smoking chimneys, to free
village life amid plants and domestic animals ;
and monotonous, bell -regulated machine work
to varied, healthy, and free agricultural labour.

Though this anticipation is as improbable as
the anticipation of the theologians about a
heaven to be enjoyed hereafter by workmen in
compensation for their hard labour here, yet
learned and educated people of our society
believe this strange teaching, just as formerly
wise and learned people believed in a heaven for
workmen in the next world.

And learned men and their disciples people
of the well-to-do classes believe this because
they must believe it. This dilemma stands

ECONOMISTS AFFIRM WHAT IS FALSE 51

before them : either they must see that all that
they make use of in their lives, from railways to
lucifer matches and cigarettes, represents labour
which costs the lives of many of their brother -
men, and that they, not sharing in that toil but
making use of it, are very dishonourable men ;
or they must believe that all that takes place,
takes place for the general advantage, in accord
with unalterable laws of economic science.
Therein lies the inner psychological cause com-
pelling men of science men wise and educated,
but not enlightened to affirm positively and
tenaciously such an obvious untruth, as that the
labourers, for their own well-being, should leave
a happy and healthy life in touch with nature,
and go to ruin their bodies and souls in factories
and workshops.

CHAPTEE VI

BANKKUPTCY OE THE SOCIALIST IDEAL

BUT even allowing the assertion (evidently
unfounded as it is, and contrary to the facts of
human nature), that it is better for people to live
in towns and to do compulsory machine work in
factories, rather than to live in villages and work
freely at handicrafts there remains in the very
ideal itself, to which the men of science tell us
the economic evolution is leading, an insoluble
contradiction. The ideal is that the workers,
having become masters of all the means of
production, are to obtain all the comforts and
pleasures now possessed by well-to-do people.
They will all be well clothed and housed, and
well nourished, and will all walk on electrically-
lighted asphalt streets, and frequent concerts and
theatres, and read papers and books, and ride on
auto-cars, etc. But that everybody may have
certain things, the production of those things
must be apportioned, and consequently it must
be decided how long each workman is to work.
How is that to be decided ?

52

THE SOCIALIST IDEAL 53

Statistics may show (though very imperfectly)
what people require in a society fettered by
capital, by competition, and by want. But no
statistics can show how much is wanted, and
what articles are needed to satisfy the demand
in a society where the means of production will
belong to the society itself, i.e. where the people
will be free.

The demands in such a society cannot be
defined, and they will always infinitely exceed
the possibility of satisfying them. Everybody
will wish to have all that the richest now
possesses, and therefore it is quite impossible to
define the quantity of goods that such a society
will require.

Furthermore, how are people to be induced to
work at articles which some consider necessary
and others consider unnecessary or even harmful ?

If it be found necessary for everybody to
work, say, six hours a day, in order to satisfy
the requirements of the society, who, in a free
society, can compel a man to work those six
hours, if he knows that part of the time is spent
on producing things he considers unnecessary or
even harmful ?

It is undeniable that under the present state
of things most varied articles are produced with
great economy of exertion, thanks to machinery,
and thanks especially to the division of labour
which has been brought to an extreme nicety

54 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

and carried to the highest perfection ; and that
these articles are profitable to the manufacturers,
and that we find them convenient and pleasant
to use. But the fact that these articles are well
made, and are produced with little expenditure
of strength, that they are profitable to the
capitalists and convenient for us, does not prove
that free men would, without compulsion,
continue to produce them. There is no doubt
that Krupp, with the present division of labour,
makes admirable cannons very quickly and art-
fully ; N. M. very quickly and artfully produces
silk materials ; X. Y. and Z. produce toilet scents,
powder to preserve the complexion, or glazed
packs of cards; and K. produces whisky of
choice flavour, etc. ; and, no doubt, both for
those who want these articles and for the owners
of the factories in which they are made, all this
is very advantageous. But cannons, and scents,
and whisky, are wanted by those who wish to
obtain control of the Chinese market, or who
like to get drunk, or are concerned about their
complexions ; but there will be some who con-
sider the production of these articles harmful.
And there will always be people who consider
that, besides these articles exhibitions, academies,
beer and beef are unnecessary and even harmful.
How are these people to be made to participate
in the production of such articles ?

But even if a means could be found to get

THE SOCIALIST IDEAL 55

all to agree to produce certain articles (though
there is no such means, and can be none, except
coercion), who, in a free society, without
capitalistic production, competition and its law
of supply and demand, will decide which articles
are to have the preference ? Which are to be
made first, and which after ? Are we first to
build the Siberian railway and fortify Port-
Arthur, and then macadamise the roads in our
country districts, or vice versd ? Which is to
come first : electric lighting or irrigation of the
fields ? And then comes another question, in-
soluble with free workmen : which men are to
do which work ? Evidently all will prefer hay-
making or drawing to stoking or cesspool
cleaning. How, in apportioning the work, are
people to be induced to agree ?

No statistics can answer these questions.
The solution can only be theoretical : it may
be said that there will be people to whom
power will be given to regulate all these matters.
Some people will decide these questions, and
others will obey them.

But besides the questions of apportioning and
directing production and of selecting work, when
the means of production are communalised there
will be another and most important question
as to the degree of division of labour that can
be established in a socialistically organised
society. The now existing division of labour

56 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

is conditioned by the necessities of the workers.
A worker only agrees to live all his life under-
ground, or to make the one-hundredth part of
one article all his life, or move his hands up
and down amid the roar of machinery all his
life, because he will otherwise not have means
to live. But it will only be by compulsion that
a workman, owning the means of production and
not suffering want, can be induced to accept
such stupefying and soul-destroying conditions
of labour as those in which people now work.
Division of labour is undoubtedly very profitable
and natural to people ; but, if people are free,
division of labour is only possible up to a
certain, very limited, extent, which has been
far overstepped in our society.

If one peasant occupies himself chiefly with
boot-making, and his wife weaves, and another
peasant ploughs, and a third is a blacksmith,
and they all, having acquired special dexterity
in their own work, afterwards exchange what
they have produced such division of labour is
advantageous to all, and free people will naturally
divide their work in this way. But a division
of labour by which a man makes one one-
hundredth of an article, or a stoker works in
140 degrees (Fahrenheit) of heat, or is choked
with harmful gases such division of labour is
disadvantageous, because though it furthers the
production of insignificant articles, it destroys

THE SOCIALIST IDEAL 57

that which is most precious the life of man.
And therefore such division of labour as now
exists, can only exist where there is compulsion.
Eodbertus l says that communal division of labour
unites mankind. That is true ; but it is only
free division such as people voluntarily adopt
that unites.

If people decide to make a road, and one
digs, another brings stones, a third breaks
them, etc. that sort of division of work unites
people.

But if, independently of the wishes, and some-
times against the wishes, of the workers, a
strategical railway is built, or an Eiffel tower,
or stupidities such as fill the Paris exhibition ;
and one workman is compelled to obtain iron,
another to dig coal, a third to make castings, a
fourth to cut down trees, and a fifth to saw
them up, without even having the least idea
what the things they are making are wanted
for, then such division of labour not only does
not unite men, but, on the contrary, it divides
them.

And, therefore, with communalised implements
of production, if people are free, they will only
adopt division of labour in as far as the good re-
sulting will outweigh the evil it occasions to the
workers. And as each man naturally sees good
in extending and diversifying his activities, such

1 A leader of German scientific Socialism (1805-75). (Trans.).

58 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

division of labour as now exists will, evidently, be
impossible in a free society.

To suppose that with communalised means of
production there will be such an abundance of
things as is now produced by compulsory division
of labour, is like supposing that after the eman-
cipation of the serfs the domestic orchestras 1 and
theatres, the home-made carpets and laces, and
the elaborate gardens which depended on serf-
labour would continue to exist as before. So
that the supposition that when the Socialist
ideal is realised, everyone will be free, and will
at the same time have at his disposal every-
thing, or almost everything, that is now made
use of by the well-to-do classes, involves an
obvious self-contradiction.

1 Before the emancipation of the serfs in Russia some pro-
prietors had private theatres of their own and troupes of
musicians and actors composed of their own serfs. On many
estates the serfs produced a variety of hand-made luxuries, as
well as necessaries, for the proprietors. (Trans.).

CHAPTEK VII

CULTURE OR FREEDOM

JUST what happened when serfdom existed is
now being repeated. Then, the majority of the
serf-owners and of people of the well-to-do
classes, if they acknowledged the serfs' position
to be not quite satisfactory, yet recommended
only such alterations as would not deprive the
owners of what was essential to their profit.
Now, people of the well-to-do classes, admitting
that the position of the workers is not altogether
satisfactory, propose for its amendment only such
measures as will not deprive the well-to-do
classes of their advantages. As well - disposed
owners then spoke of " paternal authority,"
and, like Gogol, 1 advised owners to be kind
to their serfs and to take care of them, but
would not tolerate the idea of emancipation, 2
considering it harmful and dangerous, just so,

1 N. V. Gdgol (1809-52), an admirable writer and a most
worthy man. (Trans.).

2 Tolstoy himself set an example by voluntarily emancipat-
ing all his serfs. (Trans.).

59

60 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

the majority of well-to-do people to-day advise
employers to look after the well - being of
their workpeople, but do not admit the thought
of any such alteration of the economic struc-
ture of life as would set the labourers quite
free.

And just as advanced Liberals then, while
considering serfdom to be an immutable arrange-
ment, demanded that the Government should
limit the power of the owners, and sympathised
with the serfs' agitation, so the Liberals of to-
day, while considering the existing order im-
mutable, demand that Government should limit
the powers of capitalists and manufacturers, and
they sympathise with unions, and strikes, and,
in general, with the workers' agitation. And
just as the most advanced men then demanded
the emancipation of the serfs, but drew up a
Project which left the serfs dependent on private
landowners, or fettered them with tributes and
land-taxes so now the most advanced people
demand the emancipation of the workmen from
the power of the capitalists, the communalisation
of the means of production, but yet would leave
the workers dependent on the present apportion-
ment and division of labour, which, in their
opinion, must remain unaltered. The teachings
of economic science, which are adopted (though
without close examination of their details) by
all those of the well-to-do classes who consider

CULTURE OR FREEDOM 61

themselves enlightened and advanced, 1 seem on
a superficial examination to be liberal and even
radical, containing as they do attacks on the
wealthy classes of society ; but, essentially, that
teaching is in the highest degree conservative,
gross, and cruel. One way or another the men
of science, and in their train all the well-to-do
classes, wish at all cost to maintain the present
system of distribution and division of labour,
which makes possible the production of that
great quantity of goods which they make use of.
The existing economic order is by the men of
science, and following them by all the well-to-do
classes called culture ; and in this culture :
railways, telegraphs, telephones, photographs,
Eontgen rays, clinical hospitals, exhibitions, and,
chiefly, all the appliances of comfort they see
something so sacrosanct that they will not allow
even a thought of alterations which might
destroy it all, or but endanger a small part of
these acquisitions. Everything may, according
to the teachings of that science, be changed,

1 It should be borne in mind that educated Russians, though
politically much less free, are intellectually far more free than
the corresponding section of the English population. Views
on economics, and on religion, which are here held only by
very "advanced" people, have been popular among Russian
university students for a generation past. In particular, the
doctrines of Karl Marx, and of German scientific socialism in
general, have had a much wider acceptance there than here.
(Trans.).

62 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

except what it calls culture. But it becomes
more and more evident that this culture can
only exist while the workers are compelled to
work. Yet men of science are so sure that this
culture is the greatest of blessings, that they
boldly proclaim the contrary of what the jurists
once said : fiat justitia, pereat mundus. 1 They
now say : fiat cultura, pereat justitia? And they
not only say it, but act accordingly. Everything
may be changed, in practice and in theory, except
culture, except all that is going on in workshops
and factories, and especially what is being sold
in the shops.

But I think that enlightened people, pro-
fessing the Christian law of brotherhood and
love to one's neighbour, should say just the con-
trary.

Electric lights and telephones and exhibitions
are excellent, and so are all the pleasure-gardens
with concerts and performances, and all the
cigars, and match-boxes, and braces, and motor-
cars but may they all go to perdition, and not
they alone but the railways, and all the factory-
made chintz-stuffs and cloths in the world, if to
produce them it is necessary that 99 per cent,
of the people should remain in slavery, and
perish by thousands in factories needed for the
production of these articles. If in order that

1 Let justice be done, though the world perish.

2 Let culture be preserved, though justice perishes.

CULTURE OR FREEDOM 63

London or Petersburg may be lighted by elec-
tricity, or in order to construct exhibition build-
ings, or in order that there may be beautiful
paints, or in order to weave beautiful stuffs
quickly and abundantly, it is necessary that even
a very few lives should be destroyed, or ruined, or
shortened and statistics show us how many are
destroyed let London and Petersburg rather
be lit by gas, or oil ; let there rather be no

i/ O * J

exhibition, no paints, or materials only let
there be no slavery, and no destruction of human
lives resulting from it. Truly enlightened people
will always agree to go back to riding on horses
and using pack-horses, or even to tilling the
earth with sticks and with their own hands,
rather than to travel on railways which regularly
every year crush a number of people, as is done
in Chicago, 1 merely because the proprietors of
the railway find it more profitable to compensate
the families of those killed, than to build the line
so that it should not kill people. The motto
for truly enlightened people is not fiat cultura,
pereat justitia, but fiat justitia, pereat cultura.

But culture, useful culture, will not be de-
stroyed. It will certainly not be necessary for

1 We have a somewhat similar case nearer home. In 1899
the number of railway servants killed in the United Kingdom
was 1085, besides nearly 5000 injured, yet Companies wish to
defer the introduction of such a precaution as automatic coup-
lings till yet more have been killed. (Trans.).

64 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

people to revert to tillage of the land with sticks,
or to lighting-up with torches. It is not for
nothing that mankind, in their slavery, have
achieved such great progress in technical matters.
If only it is understood that we must not sacri-
fice the lives of our brother-men for our own
pleasure, it will be possible to apply technical
improvements without destroying men's lives ;
and to arrange life so as to profit by all those
methods giving us control of nature, that have
been devised, and that can be applied without
keeping our brother-men in slavery.

CHAPTEK VIII

SLAVERY EXISTS AMONG US

IMAGINE a man from a country quite different to
our own, with no idea of our history or of our
laws, and suppose that, after showing him the
various aspects of our life, we were to ask him
what was the chief difference he noticed in the
lives of people of our world ? The chief difference
which such a man would notice in the way people
live is that some people a small number who
have clean white hands, and are well nourished
and clothed and lodged, do very little and very
light work, or even do not work at all but only
amuse themselves, spending on these amusements
the results of millions of days devoted by other
people to severe labour ; but other people, always
dirty, poorly clothed and lodged and fed with
dirty, horny hands toil unceasingly from morn-
ing to night, and sometimes all night long,
working for those who do not work, but who
continually amuse themselves.

If between the slaves and slave-owners of
to-day it is difficult to draw as sharp a dividing
5

66 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

line as that which separated the former slaves
from their masters, and if among the slaves of
to-day there are some who are only temporarily
slaves and then become slave-owners, or some
who, at one and the same time, are slaves and
slave-owners, this blending of the two classes at
their points of contact does not upset the fact
that the people of our time are divided into
slaves and slave-owners as definitely as, in spite
of the twilight, each twenty-four hours is divided
into day and night.

If the slave-owner of our times has no slave
John, whom he can send to the cesspool to clear
out his excrements, he has five shillings of which
hundreds of Johns are in such need that the
slave-owner of our times may choose anyone out
of hundreds of Johns and be a benefactor to him
by giving him the preference, and allowing him,
rather than another, to climb down into the cess-
pool. 1

The slaves of our times are not only all
those factory and workshop hands, who must sell
themselves completely into the power of the
factory and foundry owners in order to exist ;
but nearly all the agricultural labourers are
slaves, working as they do unceasingly to grow

1 Moscow has a very defective system of drainage, and a
large number of people are engaged, every night, pumping and
baling the contents of the cesspools into huge barrels, and
carting it away from the city. (Trans.).

SLAVERY EXISTS AMONG US 67

another's corn on another's field, and gathering it
into another's barn ; or tilling their own fields
only in order to pay to bankers the interest on
debts they cannot get rid of. And slaves also
are all the innumerable footmen, cooks, house-
maids, porters, coachmen, bath-men, waiters, etc.,
who all their life long perform duties most
unnatural to a human being, and which they
themselves dislike.

Slavery exists in full vigour, but we do not
perceive it ; just as in Europe, at the end of the
eighteenth century, the slavery of serfdom was
not perceived.

People of that day thought that the position
of men obliged to till the land for their lords,
and to obey them, was a natural, inevitable
economic condition of life, and they did not call
it slavery.

It is the same among us people of our day
consider the position of the labourers to be a
natural, inevitable economic condition, and they
do not call it slavery.

And as, at the end of the eighteenth century,
the people of Europe began little by little to
understand that what had seemed a natural
and inevitable form of economic life, namely, the
position of peasants who were completely in the
power of their lords, was wrong, unjust, and
immoral, and demanded alteration ; so now
people to-day are beginning to understand that

68 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

the position of hired workmen, and of the work-
ing classes in general, which formerly seemed
quite right and quite normal, is not what it
should be, and demands alteration.

The question of the slavery of our times is just
in the same phase now in which the question of
serfdom stood in Europe l towards the end of the
eighteenth century, and in which the questions
of serfdom among us, and of slavery in America,
stood in the second quarter of the nineteenth
century.

The slavery of the workers in our time is only
beginning to be admitted by advanced people in
our society ; the majority as yet are convinced
that among us no slavery exists.

A thing that helps people to-day to mis-
understand their position in this matter, is the
fact that we have, in Eussia and in America, only
recently abolished slavery. But in reality the
abolition of serfdom and of slavery was only the
abolition of an obsolete form of slavery that had
become unnecessary, and the substitution for it
of a firmer form of slavery, and one that holds
a greater number of people in bondage. The
abolition of serfdom and of slavery was like
what the Tartars of the Crimea did with their
prisoners. They invented the plan of slitting

1 I have left the distinction between Europe and Russia
(quite natural and customary to a Russian writer) as it stands
in the original. (Trans.).

SLAVERY EXISTS AMONG US 69

the soles of the prisoners' feet and sprinkling
chopped-up bristles into the wounds. Having
performed that operation, they released them
from their weights and chains. The abolition
of serfdom in Eussia and of slavery in America,
though it abolished the former method of slavery,
not only did not abolish what was essential in it,
but was only accomplished when the bristles had
formed sores on the soles, and one could be quite
sure that without chains or weights the prisoners
would not run away, but would have to work.
(The Northerners in America boldly demanded
the abolition of the former slavery because,
among them, the new monetary slavery had
already shown its power to shackle the people.
The Southerners did not yet perceive the plain
signs of the new slavery, and therefore did not
consent to abolish the old form.)

Among us in Kussia serfdom was only abolished
when all the land had been appropriated. When
land was granted to the peasants, it was burdened
with payments which took the place of the land
slavery. In Europe, taxes that kept the people
in bondage began to be abolished only when the
people had lost their land, were disaccustomed to
agricultural work, and, having acquired town
tastes, were quite dependent on the capitalists.
Only then were the taxes on corn abolished in
England. And they are now beginning, in
Germany and in other countries, to abolish the

70 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

taxes that fall on the workers, and to shift them
on to the rich only because the majority of
the people are already in the hands of the
capitalists. One form of slavery is not abolished
until another has already replaced it. There are
several such forms. And if not one then another
(and sometimes several of these means together)
keeps a people in slavery, i.e. places it in such a
position that one small part of the people has
full power over the labour and the life of a larger
number. In this enslavement of the larger part
of the people by a smaller part lies the chief
cause of the miserable condition of the people.
And therefore the means of improving the position
of the workers must consist in this : First, in
admitting that among us slavery exists, not in
some figurative, metaphorical sense, but in the
simplest and plainest sense ; slavery which keeps
some people the majority, in the power of others
the minority ; secondly, having admitted this,
in finding the causes of the enslavement of some
people by others ; and thirdly, having found these
causes, in destroying them.

CHAPTEK IX

WHAT IS SLAVERY?

IN what does the slavery of our time consist ?
What are the forces that make some people the
slaves of others ? If we ask all the workers in
Kussia and in Europe and in America alike
in the factories and in various situations in
which they work for hire, in towns and villages
what has made them choose the position in
which they are living, they will all reply that
they have been brought to it ; either because
they had no land on which they could and wished
to live and work (that will be the reply of all
the Eussian workmen and of very many of the
Europeans), or that taxes, direct and indirect,
were demanded of them, which they could only
pay by selling their labour, or that they remain
at factory work ensnared by the more luxurious
habits they have adopted, and which they can
gratify only by selling their labour and their
liberty.

The two first conditions the lack of land
and the taxes drive man to compulsory labour,

72 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

while the third his increased and unsatisfied
needs decoy him to it and keep him at it.

We can imagine that the land may be freed
from the claims of private proprietors, by
Henry George's plan, and that, therefore, the
first cause driving people into slavery the
lack of land may be done away with. We
can also, besides the Single-Tax plan, imagine
the direct abolition of taxes, or that they should
be transferred from the poor to the rich, as is
being done now in some countries ; but, under
the present economic organisation, one cannot
even imagine a position of things under which
more and more luxurious, and often harmful,
habits of life would not be adopted among the
rich, and that these habits should not, little by
little, pass to those of the lower classes who are
in contact with the rich, as inevitably as water
sinks into dry ground, and that these habits
should not become so necessary to the workers
that, in order to be able to satisfy them, they
will be ready to sell their freedom.

So that this third condition, though it is a
voluntary one (i.e. it would seem that a man
might resist the temptation), and though science
does not acknowledge it to be a cause of the
miserable condition of the workers, is the firmest
and most irremovable cause of slavery.

Workmen living near rich people always are
infected with new requirements, and only obtain

WHAT IS SLAVERY? 73

means to satisfy these requirements in so far
as they devote their most intense labour to
this satisfaction. So that workmen in England
and America, receiving sometimes ten times as
much as is necessary for subsistence, continue to
be just such slaves as they were before.

Three causes, as the workmen themselves ex-
plain, produce the slavery in which they live ;
and the history of their enslavement and the
facts of their position confirm the correctness
of this explanation.

All the workers are brought to their present
state, and are kept in it, by these three causes.
These causes, acting on people from different
sides, are such that none can escape from their
enslavement. The agriculturist who has no
land, or who has not enough, will always be
obliged to go into perpetual or temporary slavery
to the landowner, in order to have the possibility
of feeding himself from the land. Should he,
in one way or other, obtain land enough to be
able to feed himself from it by his own labour,
such taxes, direct or indirect, are demanded from
him, that in order to pay them he has again to
go into slavery.

If to escape from slavery on the land, he
ceases to cultivate land, and, living on someone
else's land, begins to occupy himself with a handi-
craft, and to exchange his produce for the things
he needs, then, on the one hand, taxes, and, on

74 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

the other hand, the competition of capitalists,
producing similar articles to those he makes,
but with better implements of production, compel
him to go into temporary or perpetual slavery to
a capitalist. If working for a capitalist, he might
set up free relations with him, and not be obliged
to sell his liberty, yet the new requirements
which he assimilates deprive him of any such
possibility. So that, one way or another, the
labourer is always in slavery to those who control
the taxes, the land, and the articles necessary to
satisfy his requirements.

CHAPTEK X

LAWS CONCERNING TAXES, LAND, AND PEOPEETY

THE German Socialists have termed the combina-
tion of conditions which put the workers in
subjection to the capitalists, the iron law of
wages, implying by the word " iron " that this
law is immutable. But in these conditions
there is nothing immutable ; these conditions
merely result from human laws concerning taxes,
land, and, above all, concerning things which
satisfy our requirements, i.e. concerning property.
Laws are framed, and repealed, by human beings.
So that it is not some sociological "iron" law,
but ordinary man-made law, that produces slavery.
In the case in hand, the slavery of our times is
very clearly and definitely produced, not by some
" iron " elemental law, but by human enactments :
about land, about taxes, and about property.
There is one set of laws by which any quantity
of land may belong to private people, and may
pass from one to another by inheritance, or by
will, or may be sold ; there is another set of laws
by which everyone must pay the taxes demanded

76 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

of him unquestioningly ; and there is a third set
of laws to the effect that any quantity of articles,
by whatever means acquired, may become the
absolute property of the people who hold them.
And in consequence of these laws slavery exists.

We are so accustomed to all these laws, that
they seem to us just as necessary and natural to
human life, as the laws maintaining serfdom and
slavery seemed in former times ; no doubt about
their necessity and justice seems possible, and
we notice nothing wrong in them. But just
as a time came when people, having seen the
ruinous consequences of serfdom, questioned the
justice and necessity of the laws which main-
tained it, so now, when the pernicious conse-
quences of the present economic order have
become evident, one involuntarily questions the
justice and inevitability of the legislation about
land, taxes, and property, which produces these
results.

As people formerly asked, Is it right that
some people should belong to others, and that
the former should have nothing of their own, but
should give all the produce of their labour to their
owners ? so now we must ask ourselves, Is it
right that people must not use land accounted
the property of other people ? is it right that
people should hand over to others, in the form
of taxes, whatever part of their labour is de-
manded of them ? Is it right that people may

LAWS CONCERNING TAXES, ETC. 77

not make use of articles considered to be the
property of other people ?

Is it right that people should not have the use
of land when it is considered to belong to others
who are not cultivating it ?

It is said that this legislation is instituted
because landed property is an essential condition
if agriculture is to flourish, and if there were no
private property passing by inheritance, people
would drive one another from the land they
occupy, and no one would work or improve the
land on which he is settled. Is this true ? The
answer is to be found in history, and in the facts
of to-day. History shows that property in land
did not arise from any wish to make the culti-
vator's tenure more secure, but resulted from the
seizure of communal lands by conquerors, and its
distribution to those who served the conquerors.
So that property in land was not established
with the object of stimulating the agriculturists.
Present-day facts show the fallacy of the asser-
tion that landed property enables those who
work the land to be sure that they will not be
deprived of the land they cultivate. In reality
just the contrary has everywhere happened, and
is happening. The right of landed property, by
which the great proprietors have profited most,
and are profiting, has produced the result that
all, or most, i.e. the immense majority of the

78 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

agriculturists, are now in the position of people
who cultivate other people's land, from which
they may be driven at the whim of men who do
not cultivate it. So that the existing right of
landed property certainly does not defend the
rights of the agriculturist to enjoy the fruits of
the labour he puts into the land, but, on the con-
trary, it is a way of depriving the agriculturists
of the land on which they work, and handing it
over to those who have not worked it ; and there-
fore it is certainly not a means for the improve-
ment of agriculture, but, on the contrary, a means
of deteriorating it.

About taxes it is said that people ought to
pay them because they are instituted with the
general, even though silent, consent of all ; and are
used for public needs, to the advantage of all. Is
this true ?

The answer to this question is given in history
and in present-day facts. History shows that
taxes never were instituted by common consent,
but, on the contrary, always only in consequence
of the fact that some people having obtained
power (by conquest or by other means) over
other people, imposed tribute, not for public
needs, but for themselves. And the same thing
is still going on. Taxes are taken by those who
have the power to take them. If nowadays
some portion of these tributes, called taxes and
duties, are used for public purposes, it is, for the

LAWS CONCERNING TAXES, ETC. 79

most part, for public purposes that are harmful
rather than useful to most people.

For instance, in Eussia one -third of the
peasants' whole income is taken in taxes, but only
one-fiftieth of the State revenue is spent on their
greatest need, the education of the people ; and
even that amount is spent on a kind of educa-
tion which, by stupefying the people, harms them
more than it benefits them. The other forty-
nine-fiftieths are spent on unnecessary things,
harmful for the people, such as equipping the
army, building strategical railways, forts, and
prisons, or supporting the priesthood and the
court, and on salaries for military and civil
officials, i.e. on salaries for those people who
make it possible to take this money from the
people.

The same thing goes on not only in Persia,
Turkey, and India, but also in all the Christian
and constitutional States and democratic Republics:
money is taken from the majority of the people,
quite independently of the consent or non-
consent of the payers, and the amount collected
is not what is really needful, but as much as
can be got (we know how Parliaments are made
up, and how little they represent the will of
the people), and it is used not for the common
advantage, but for things the. governing classes
consider necessary for themselves : on wars in
Cuba or the Philippines, on taking and keeping

8o THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

the riches of the Transvaal, and so forth. So
that the explanation that people must pay taxes
because they are instituted with general consent
and are used for the common good, is as unjust
as the other explanation, that private property
in land is established to encourage agriculture.

Is it true that people should not use articles
needful to satisfy their requirements, if those
articles are the property of other people ?

It is asserted that the right of property in
acquired articles is established in order to make
the worker sure that no one will take from him
the produce of his labour.

Is this true ?

It is only necessary to glance at what is done
in our world, where property rights are defended
with especial strictness, in order to be convinced
how completely the facts of life run counter to
this explanation.

In our society, in consequence of the right
of property in acquired articles, the very thing
happens which that right is intended to pre-
vent : namely, all articles which have been, and
continually are being, produced by working
people, are possessed by (and as they are pro-
duced are continually taken by) those who have
not produced them.

So that the assertion that the right of
property secures to the workers the possibility
of enjoying the products of their labour is

LAWS CONCERNING TAXES, ETC. 81

evidently yet more unjust than the assertion
concerning property in land, and it is based on
the same sophistry : first, the fruit of their toil
is unjustly and violently taken from the workers,
and then the law steps in, and these very articles
which have been taken from the workmen, un-
justly and by violence, are declared to be the
absolute property of those who have stolen
them.

Property : for instance a factory, acquired by a
series of frauds and by taking advantage of the
workmen, is considered a result of labour, and is
held sacred; but the lives of those workmen
who perish at work in that factory, and their
labour, are not considered their property, but
are rather considered to be the property of the
factory owner, if he taking advantage of the
necessities of the workers has bound them
down in a manner considered legal. Hundreds
of thousands of bushels of corn, collected from
the peasants by usury and by a series of
extortions, are considered to be the property of
the merchant, while the growing corn raised by
the peasants is considered to be the property of
someone else, if he has inherited the land from
a grandfather or great-grandfather who took it
from the people. It is said that the law defends
equally the property of the millowner, of the
capitalist, of the landowner, and of the factory
or country labourer. The equality of the
6

82 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

capitalist and of the worker is like the equality
of two fighters, of whom one has his arms tied
and the other has weapons, but to both of whom
certain rules are applied with strict impartiality
while they fight. So that all the explanations
of the justice and necessity of the three sets of
laws which produce slavery are as untrue as
were the explanations formerly given of the
justice and necessity of serfdom. All those
three sets of laws are nothing but the establish-
ment of that new form of slavery which has
replaced the old form. As people formerly
established laws enabling some people to buy and
sell other people, and to own them, and to make
them work and slavery existed ; so now people
have established laws that men may not use
land that is considered to belong to someone
else, must pay the taxes demanded of them,
and must not use articles considered to be the
property of others and we have the slavery of
our tunes.

CHAPTEK XI

LAWS THE CAUSE OF SLAVERY

THE slavery of our times results from three ssts
of laws : those about land, taxes, and property.
And therefore all the attempts of those who
wish to improve the position of the workers are
inevitably, though unconsciously, directed against
those three legislations.

One set of people repeal taxes weighing on the
working classes, and transfer them on to the rich ;
others propose to abolish the right of private
property in land, and attempts are being made
to put this in practice both in New Zealand and
in one of the American States (the limitation of
landlords' rights in Ireland is a move in the same
direction) ; a third set the Socialists propose
to communalise the means of production, to tax
incomes and inheritances, and to limit the rights
of capitalist employers. It would therefore seem
as though the legislative enactments which cause
slavery were being repealed, and that we may
therefore expect slavery to be abolished in this
way. But we need only look more closely at

83

84 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

the conditions under which the abolition of
these legislative enactments is accomplished or
proposed, to be convinced that not only the
practical but even the theoretical projects for
the improvement of the workers' position, are
merely replacing one legislation producing slavery
by another establishing a newer form of slavery.
Thus, for instance, those who abolish taxes and
duties on the poor, first abolishing direct dues,
and then transferring the burden of taxation
from the poor to the rich, necessarily have to
retain, and do retain, the laws making private
property of land, of the means of production, and
of other articles on to which the whole burden
of the taxes is shifted. The retention of the
laws concerning land and property keeps the
workers in slavery to the landowners and the
capitalists, even though the workers are freed
from taxes. Those who, like Henry George and
his partisans, would abolish the laws making
private property of land, propose new laws im-
posing an obligatory rent on the land. And this
obligatory land rent will necessarily create a new
form of slavery ; because a man compelled to
pay rent or single-tax may, at any failure of
the crops or other misfortune, have to borrow
money from a man who has some to lend, and
he will again lapse into slavery. Those who
like the Socialists in theory, wish to abolish the
legalisation of property in land and in means of

LAWS THE CAUSE OF SLAVERY 85

production, not only retain the legalisation of taxes,
but must, moreover, inevitably introduce laws of
compulsory labour i.e. they must re-establish
slavery in its primitive form.

So that, this way or that way, all the practical
and theoretical repeals of certain laws maintain-
ing slavery in one form, have always, and do
always, replace it by new legislation creating
slavery in another and a fresh form.

What happens is something like what a jailer
might do who shifted a prisoner's chains from
the neck to the arms, and from the arms to the
legs, or took them off and substituted bolts and
bars. All the improvements that have hitherto
taken place in the position of the workers have
been of this kind.

The laws giving a master the right to com-
pel his slaves to do compulsory work, were re-
placed by laws allowing the masters to own all
the land. The laws allowing all the land to
become the private property of the masters may
be replaced by taxation laws, the control of the
taxes being in the hands of the masters. The
taxation laws may be replaced by others defending
the right of private property in articles of use
and in the means of production. The laws main-
taining property in land and in articles of use
and means of production, may, as is now pro-
posed, be replaced by the enactment of com-
pulsory labour.

86 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

So it is evident that the abolition of one form
of legalisation producing the slavery of our time
whether taxes, or land-owning, or property in
articles of use or in the means of production
will not destroy slavery, but will only repeal
one of its forms, which will immediately be re-
placed by a new one, as was the case with the
abolition of chattel slavery, and of serfdom, and
with the repeals of taxes. Even the abolition of
all three groups of laws together, will not abolish
slavery, but evoke a new and previously, unknown
form of it, which is now already beginning to
show itself and to shackle the freedom of labour
by legislation concerning the hours of work, the
age and state of health of the workers, as well
as by demanding obligatory attendance at schools,
by deductions for old-age insurance or accidents,
by all the measures of factory inspection, etc.
All this is nothing but transitional legalisa-
tion preparing a new and as yet untried form
of slavery.

So that it becomes evident that the essence of
slavery lies not in those three roots of legisla-
tion on which it now rests, and not even in such,
or such other, legislative enactments, but in the
fact that legislation exists that there are people
who have power to decree laws profitable for
themselves, and that as long as people have that
power there will be slavery.

Formerly it was profitable for people to have

LAWS THE CAUSE OF SLAVERY 87

chattel slaves ; and they made laws about chattel
slavery. Afterwards it became profitable to own
land, to take taxes, and to keep things one had
acquired, and they made laws correspondingly.
Now it is profitable for people to maintain the
existing direction and division of labour ; and
they are devising such laws as will compel
people to work under the present apportionment
and division of labour. Thus the fundamental
cause of slavery is legislation : the fact that
there are people who have the power to make
laws.

What is legislation ? and what gives people
the power to make laws ?

CHAPTEE XII

THE ESSENCE OF LEGISLATION IS OKGANISED
VIOLENCE

WHAT is legislation ? And what enables people
to make laws ?

There exists a whole science, even more
ancient, mendacious, and confused, than political
economy, the servants of which in the course of
centuries have written millions of books (for the
most part contradicting one another) to answer
these questions. But as the aim of this science,
as of political economy, is not to explain what
now is and what ought to be, but rather to prove
that what now is, is what ought to be, it happens
that in this science (of jurisprudence) we find
very many dissertations about rights, about ob-
ject and subject, about the idea of a State, and
other such matters, which are unintelligible
both to the students and to the teachers of this
science ; but we get no clear reply to the ques-
tion what is legislation ?

According to science, legislation is the expres-
sion of the will of the whole people ; but as

LEGISLATION ORGANISED VIOLENCE 89

those who break the laws, or who wish to break
them and only refrain from doing so through fear
of being punished, are always more numerous than
those who wish to carry out the code, it is evident
that legislation can certainly not be considered as
the expression of the will of the whole people.

For instance, there are laws about not injuring
telegraph posts ; about showing respect to certain
people ; about each man performing military
service, 1 or serving as a juryman ; about not
taking certain goods beyond a certain frontier ; or
about not using land considered to be the property
of someone else ; about not making money tokens ;
not using articles which are considered to be
the property of others, and about many other
matters.

All these laws and many others are extremely
complex, and may have been passed from most
diverse motives, but not one of them expresses
the will of the whole people. There is but one
characteristic common to all these laws, namely,
that if any man does not fulfil them, those who
have made these laws will send armed men, and
the armed men will beat, deprive of freedom, or
even kill, the man who does not obey the law.

If a man does not wish to give, as taxes, such
part of the produce of his labour as is demanded

1 It must not be forgotten that conscription, with which
we in England are only threatened, already exists in Russia.
(Trans.).

go THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

of him, armed men will come and take from him
what is demanded, and if he resists he will be
beaten, deprived of freedom, and sometimes even
killed. The same will happen to a man who
begins to make use of land considered to be the
property of another. The same will happen to
a man who makes use of things he wants to
satisfy his requirements or to facilitate his work,
if these things are considered to be the pro-
perty of someone else ; armed men will come, and
will deprive him of what he has taken, and, if
he resists, they will beat him, deprive him of
liberty, or even kill him. The same thing will
happen to anyone who will not show respect to
those whom it is decreed that we are to respect,
and to him who will not obey the demand that
he should go as a soldier, or who makes money
tokens.

For every non-fulfilment of the established
laws there is punishment : the offender is sub-
jected, by those who make the laws, to blows, to
confinement, or even to loss of life.

Many constitutions have been devised, begin-
ning with the English and the American and
ending with the Japanese and the Turkish,
according to which people are to believe that
all laws established in their country are estab-
lished at their desire. But everyone knows that
not in despotic countries only, but also in the
countries nominally most free England, America,

LEGISLATION ORGANISED VIOLENCE 91

France, and others the laws are made not by
the will of all, but by the will of those who have
power, and therefore always and everywhere
are such as are profitable to those who have
power : be they many, or few, or only one man.
Everywhere and always the laws are enforced
by the only means that has compelled, and still
compels, some people to obey the will of others,
i.e. by blows, by deprivation of liberty, and by
murder. There can be no other way.

It cannot be otherwise. For laws are demands
to execute certain rules ; and to compel some
people to obey certain rules (i.e. to do what other
people want of them) can only be effected by
blows, by deprivation of liberty, and by murder.
If there are laws, there must be the force that
can compel people to obey them. And there is
only one force that can compel people to obey
rules (i.e. to obey the will of others) and that is
violence ; not the simple violence which people
use to one another in moments of passion, but
the organised violence used by people who have
power, in order to compel others to obey the
laws they (the powerful) have made in other
words, to do their will.

And so the essence of legislature does not
lie in Subject or Object, in rights, or in the
idea of the dominion of the collective will of the
people, or in other such indefinite and confused
conditions ; but it lies in the fact that people

92 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

who wield organised violence have power to com-
pel others to obey them and do as they like.

So that the exact and irrefutable definition of
legislation, intelligible to all, is that : Laws are
rules, made by people who govern by means of
organised violence, for non-compliance with which
the non-complier is subjected to blows, to loss of
liberty, or even to being murdered.

This definition furnishes the reply to the
question : What is it that renders it possible for
people to make laws ? The same thing makes it
possible to establish laws, as enforces obedience
to them, namely, organised violence.

CHAPTER XIII

WHAT ARE GOVERNMENTS ? IS IT POSSIBLE
TO EXIST WITHOUT GOVERNMENTS ?

THE cause of the miserable condition of the
workers is slavery. The cause of slavery is legisla-
tion. Legislation rests on organised violence.

It follows that an improvement in the con-
dition of the people is possible only through the
abolition of organised violence.

"But organised violence is government, and
how can we live without Governments ? With-
out Governments there will be chaos, anarchy ;
all the achievements of civilisation will perish and
people will revert to their primitive barbarism."

It is usual, not only for those to whom the
existing order is profitable, but even for those
to whom it is evidently unprofitable, but who
are so accustomed to it that they cannot imagine
life without governmental violence, to say we
must not dare to touch the existing order of
things. The destruction of government will,
say they, produce the greatest misfortunes riot,
theft, and murder till finally the worst men

93

94 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

will again seize power and enslave all the good
people. But not to mention the fact that all
this i.e. riots, thefts, and murders, followed by
the rule of the wicked and the enslavement of
the good all this is what has happened, and is
happening, the anticipation that the disturbance
of the existing order will produce riots and dis-
order does not prove the present order to be good.

" Only touch the present order and the
greatest evils will follow."

Only touch one brick of the thousand bricks
piled into a narrow column, several yards high,
and all the bricks will tumble down and smash !
But the fact that any brick extracted, or any
push administered, will destroy such a column
and smash the bricks, certainly does not prove
it to be wise to keep the bricks in such an
unnatural and inconvenient position. On the
contrary, it shows that bricks should not be
piled in such a column, but that they should be
arranged so that they may lie firmly, and so
that they can be made use of without destroying
the whole erection. It is the same with the
present State organisations. The State organi-
sation is extremely artificial and unstable, and
the fact that the least push may destroy it, not
only does not prove that it is necessary, but on
the contrary shows that, if once upon a time it
was necessary, it is now absolutely unnecessary,
and is therefore harmful and dangerous. .

WHAT ARE GOVERNMENTS? 95

It is harmful and dangerous because the effect
of this organisation on all the evil that exists in
society is not to lessen and correct, but rather
to strengthen and confirm, that evil. It is
strengthened and confirmed, by being either
justified and put in attractive forms, or secreted.

All that well-being of the people which we
see in so-called well-governed States, ruled by
violence, is but an appearance a fiction.
Everything that would disturb the external
appearance of well-being all the hungry people,
the sick, the revoltingly vicious are all hidden
away where they cannot be seen. But the fact
that we do not see them, does not show that they
do not exist ; on the contrary, the more they are
hidden the more there will be of them, and the
more cruel towards them will those be who are
the cause of their condition. It is true that
every interruption, and yet more every stoppage
of governmental action, i.e. of organised violence,
disturbs this external appearance of well-being
in our life, but such disturbance does not pro-
duce the disorder, but rather displays what was
hidden and makes possible its amendment.

Until now, say till almost the end of the
nineteenth century, people thought and believed
that they could not live without Governments.
But life flows onward, and the conditions of life,
and people's views, change. And, notwithstand-
ing the efforts of Governments to keep people

96 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

in that childish condition in which an injured
man feels as if it were better for him to have
someone to complain to, people especially the
labouring people, both in Europe and in Eussia
are more and more emerging from childhood
and beginning to understand the true conditions
of their life.

"You tell us that but for you we shall be
conquered by neighbouring nations : by the
Chinese or the Japanese," men of the people
now say ; " but we read the papers and know
that no one is threatening to attack us, and that
it is only you who govern us who for some
objects, unintelligible to us, exasperate each other,
and then, under pretence of defending your own
people, ruin us with taxes for the maintenance
of the fleet, for armaments, or for strategical
railways, which are only required to gratify your
ambition and vanity ; and then you arrange wars
with one another, as you have now done against
the peaceful Chinese. You say that you defend
landed property for our advantage ; but your
defence has this effect : that all the land either
has passed or is passing into the control of rich
banking companies which do not labour ; while
we, the immense majority of the people, are being
deprived of land and left in the power of those
who do not labour. You, with your laws of
landed property, do not defend landed property,
but take it from those who work it. You say

WHAT ARE GOVERNMENTS? 97

you secure to each man the produce of his labour,
but you do just the reverse : all those who pro-
duce articles of value, are, thanks to your pseudo-
protection, placed in such a position that they
not only never receive the value of their labour,
but are all their lives long in complete subjection
to, and in the power of, non-workers."

Thus do people, at the end of the century,
begin to understand and to speak. And this
awakening from the lethargy in which Govern-
ments have kept them, is going on in some
rapidly increasing ratio. Within the last five or
six years the public opinion of the common folk,
not only in the towns but in the villages, and
not only in Europe but also among us in Eussia,
has altered amazingly.

It is said that without Governments we
should not have those institutions : enlightening,
educational, and public, that are needful for all.

But why should we suppose this ? Why
think that non-official people could not arrange
their life for themselves, as well as Government
people can arrange it not for themselves but for
others ?

We see, on the contrary, that in the most
diverse matters people in our times arrange their
own lives incomparably better than those who
govern them arrange things for them. Without
the least help from Government, and often in
spite of the interference of Government, people
7

98 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

organise all sorts of social undertakings work-
men's unions, co-operative societies, railway com-
panies, artels, 1 and syndicates. If collections for
public works are needed, why should we suppose
that free people could not, without violence, volun-
tarily collect the necessary means and carry out
anything that is now carried out by means of
taxes, if only the undertakings in question are
really useful for everybody ? Why suppose that
there cannot be tribunals without violence ? Trial,
by people trusted by the disputants, has always
existed and will exist, and needs no violence. We
are so depraved by long-continued slavery, that we
can hardly imagine administration without viol-
ence. And yet, again, that is not true : Eussian
communes migrating to distant regions, where our
Government leaves them alone, arrange their
own taxation, administration, tribunals, and
police, and always prosper until governmental
violence interferes with their administration.
And in the same way there is no reason to
suppose that people could not, by common agree-
ment, decide how the land is to be apportioned
for use.

I have known people Cossacks of the Oural
who have lived without acknowledging private
property in land. And there was such well-being

1 The artel, in its most usual form, is an association of
workmen, or employes, for each of whom the artel is collec-
tively responsible. (Trans.).

WHAT ARE GOVERNMENTS? 99

and order in their commune as does not exist
in society where landed property is defended by
violence. And I now know communes that live
without acknowledging the right of individuals
to private property. Within my recollection
the whole Eussian peasantry did not accept the
idea of landed property. 1 The defence of landed
property by governmental violence not merely
does not abolish the struggle for landed property,
but, on the contrary, intensifies that struggle, and
in many cases causes it.

Were, it not for the defence of landed pro-
perty and its consequent rise in price, people
would not be crowded into such narrow spaces,
but would scatter over the free land of which
there is still so much in the world. But, as
it is, a continual struggle goes on for landed
property ; a struggle with the weapons Govern-
ment furnishes by means of its laws of landed
property. And in this struggle it is not those
who work on the land, but always those who
take part in governmental violence, who have the
advantage.

1 Serfdom was legalised about 1597 by Boris Godunof, who
forbade the peasants to leave the land on which they were
settled. The peasants' theory of the matter was that they
belonged to the proprietors, but the land belonged to them.
"We are yours, but the land is ours," was a common saying
among them till their emancipation under Alexander II.,
when many of them felt themselves defrauded by the arrange-
ment which gave much laud to the proprietors. (Trans.).

ioo THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

It is the same with reference to things pro-
duced by labour. Things really produced by a
man's own labour, and that he needs, are always
protected by custom, by public opinion, by feel-
ings of justice and reciprocity, and they do not
need to be protected by violence.

Tens of thousands of acres of forest lands
belonging to one proprietor while thousands of
people close by have no fuel need protection by
violence. So, too, do factories and works where
several generations of workmen have been de-
frauded and are still being defrauded. Yet more
do hundreds of thousands of bushels of grain,
belonging to one owner, who has held them
back to sell them at triple price in time of
famine. But no man, however depraved except
a rich man or a Government official would take
from a countryman living by his own labour the
harvest he has raised, or the cow he has bred,
and from which he gets milk for his children,
or the sokhds, 1 the scythes, and the spades he has
made and uses. If even a man were found who
did take from another articles the latter had
made and required, such a man would rouse
against himself such indignation, from everyone
living in similar circumstances, that he would
hardly find his action profitable for himself. A
man so immoral as to do it under such circuni-

1 The sokhd is a light plough, such as the Russian peasants
make and use. (Trans.).

WHAT ARE GOVERNMENTS ? 101

stances, would be sure to do it under the strictest
system of property defence by violence. It is
generally said, " Only attempt to abolish the
rights of property in land, and in the produce of
labour, and no one will take the trouble to
work, lacking assurance that he will be able
to retain what he has produced." We should
say just the opposite : the defence by violence of
the rights of property immorally obtained, which
is now customary, if it has not quite destroyed,
has considerably weakened people's natural con-
sciousness of justice in the matter of using
articles, i.e., has weakened the natural and innate
right of property, without which humanity could
not exist, and which has always existed and still
exists among all men.

And, therefore, there is no reason to anticipate
that people will not be able to arrange their lives
without organised violence.

Of course, it may be said that horses and bulls
must be guided by the violence of rational beings
men ; but why must men be guided, not by
some higher beings, but by people such as them-
selves ? Why ought people to be subject to the
violence of just those men who are in power at a
given time ? What proves that these people are
wiser than those on whom they inflict violence ?

The fact that they allow themselves to use
violence towards human beings, indicates that
they are not only not more wise, but less wise

102 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

than those who submit to them The examinations
in China for the office of Mandarin do not, we
know, ensure that the wisest and best people should
be placed in power. And just as little is this
ensured by inheritance, or the whole machinery
of promotions in rank, or the elections in consti-
tutional countries. On the contrary, power is
always seized by those who are less conscientious
and less moral.

It is said, " How can people live without
Governments, i.e. without violence ? " But it should,
on the contrary, be asked, " How can rational
people live, acknowledging the vital bond of
their social life to be violence, and not reason-
able agreement ? "

One of two things : either people are rational
beings or they are irrational beings. If they are
irrational beings, then they are all irrational, and
then everything among them is decided by violence,
and there is no reason why certain people should,
and others should not, have a right to use viol-
ence. And in that case, governmental violence
has no justification. But if men are rational
beings, then their relations should be based on
reason, and not on the violence of those who
happen to have seized power. And in that case,
again, governmental violence has no justification.

CHAPTER XIV

HOW CAN GOVERNMENTS BE ABOLISHED?

SLAVERY results from laws, laws are made by
Governments, and, therefore, people can only be
freed from slavery by the abolition of Govern-
ments.

But how can Governments be abolished ?

All attempts to get rid of Governments by
violence have, hitherto, always and everywhere
resulted only in this : that in place of the
deposed Governments, new ones established
themselves, often more cruel than those they
replaced.

Not to mention past attempts to abolish
Governments by violence, according to the
Socialist theory the coming abolition of the
rule of the capitalists, i.e. the communalisation
of the means of production, and the new economic
order of society, is also to be instituted by a
fresh organisation of violence, and will have to
be maintained by the same means. So that
attempts to abolish violence by violence, neither
have in the past, nor, evidently, can in the future,

103

104 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

emancipate people from violence, nor, conse-
quently, from slavery.

It cannot be otherwise.

Apart from outbursts of revenge or anger,
violence is used only in order to compel some
people against tbeir own will to do the will of
others. But the necessity to do what other
people wish, against your own will, is slavery.
And therefore as long as any violence, designed
to compel some people to do the will of others,
exists, there will be slavery.

All the attempts to abolish slavery by violence,
are like extinguishing fire with fire, stopping
water with water, or filling up one hole by
digging another.

Therefore the means of escape from slavery,
if such means exist, must be found not in
setting up fresh violence, but in abolishing what-
ever renders governmental violence possible.
And the possibility of governmental violence,
like every other violence perpetrated by a small
number of people upon a larger number, has
always depended, and still depends, simply on
the fact that the small number are armed, while
the large number are unarmed, or that the small
number are better armed than the large number.

That has been the case in all the conquests :
it was thus the Greeks, the Eomans, the
Knights, and Pizarros conquered nations, and it is
thus that people are now conquered in Africa and

HOW TO ABOLISH GOVERNMENTS 105

Asia. And in this same way, in times of peace,
all Governments hold their subjects in subjection.

As of old so now, people rule over other
people only because some are armed and others
are not.

In olden times, the warriors, with their chiefs,
fell upon the defenceless inhabitants, subdued
them, and robbed them ; and all divided the
spoils in proportion to their participation,
courage, and cruelty ; and each warrior saw
clearly that the violence he perpetrated was
profitable to him. Now, armed men (taken
chiefly from the working classes) attack defence-
less people : men on strike, rioters, or the
inhabitants of other countries, and subdue them,
and rob them (i.e. make them yield the fruits of
their labour), not for themselves, the assailants,
but for people who do not even take a share in
the subjugation.

The difference between the conquerors and the
Governments is only, that the conquerors them-
selves with their soldiers attacked the unarmed
inhabitants, and, in cases of insubordination,
carried their threats to torture and to kill into
execution ; while the Governments, in cases of
insubordination, do not themselves torture or exe-
cute the unarmed inhabitants, but oblige others
to do it, who have been deceived and specially
brutalised for the purpose, and who are chosen
from among the very people on whom the Govern-

io6 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

nient inflicts violence. Thus violence was formerly
inflicted by personal effort : by the courage, cruelty,
and agility of the conquerors themselves ; but
now violence is inflicted by means of fraud.

So that if, formerly, in order to get rid of
armed violence, it was necessary to arm oneself
and to oppose armed violence by armed violence,
now, when people are subdued not by direct
violence but by fraud, it is only necessary, in
order to abolish violence, to expose the deception
which enables a small number of people to
exercise violence over a larger number.

The deception by means of which this is done,
consists in the fact that the small number who
rule, on obtaining power from their predecessors,
who were installed by conquest, say to the
majority, " There are a lot of you, but you are
stupid and uneducated, and cannot either govern
yourselves or organise your public affairs, and
therefore we will take those cares on ourselves :
we will protect you from foreign foes, and arrange
and maintain internal order among you ; we will
set up courts of justice, arrange for you, and
take care of, public institutions : schools, roads,
and the postal service ; and, in general, we will
take care of your well-being ; and in return for
all this, you only have to fulfil certain slight
demands which we make ; and, among other
things, you must give into our complete control
a small part of your incomes, and you must

HOW TO ABOLISH GOVERNMENTS 107

yourselves enter the armies which are needed
for your own safety and government."

And most people agree to this, not because
they have weighed the advantages and dis-
advantages of these conditions (they never have
a chance to do that), but because from their
very birth they have found themselves in con-
ditions such as these.

If doubts suggest themselves to some people
as to whether all this is necessary, each one
thinks only about himself, and fears to suffer if
he refuses to accept these conditions ; each one
hopes to take advantage of them for his own
profit, and everyone agrees, thinking that by
paying a small part of his means to the Govern-
ment, and by consenting to military service, he
cannot do himself very much harm.

But as soon as the Governments have the
money and the soldiers, instead of fulfilling their
promises to defend their subjects from foreign
enemies, and to arrange things for their benefit,
they do all they can to provoke th6 neighbouring
nations and to produce war ; and "they not only
do not promote the internal well-being of their
people, but they ruin and corrupt them.

In the Arabian Nights there is a story of a
traveller who, being cast upon an uninhabited
island, found a little old man with withered legs
sitting on the ground by the side of a stream.
The old man asked the traveller to take him on

io8 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

his shoulders and to carry him over the stream.
The traveller consented, but no sooner was the
old man settled on the traveller's shoulders than
the former twined his legs round the latter's
neck, and would not get off again. Having con-
trol of the traveller, the old man drove him
about as he liked, plucked fruit from the trees,
and ate it himself, not giving any to his bearer,
and abused him in every way.

This is just what happens with the people
who give soldiers and money to the Govern-
ments. With the money the Governments buy
guns, and hire, or train up by education, sub-
servient, brutalised, military commanders. And
these commanders, by means of an artful system
of stupefaction, perfected in the course of ages,
and called discipline, make those who have been
taken as soldiers into a disciplined army. Disci-
pline consists in this, that people who are sub-
jected to this training, and remain under it for
some time, are completely deprived of all that is
valuable in human life, and of man's chief attri-
bute rational freedom and become submissive
machine-like instruments of murder in the hands
of their organised, hierarchical stratocracy. And
it is in this disciplined army that the essence of
the fraud dwells, which gives to modern Govern-
ments dominion over the peoples. When the
Governments have in their power this instrument
of violence and murder, that possesses no will of

HOW TO ABOLISH GOVERNMENTS 109

its own, the whole people are in their hands,
and they do not let them go again, and not only
prey upon them, but also abuse them, instilling
into the people, by means of a pseudo-religious and
patriotic education, loyalty to, and even adoration
of, themselves, i.e. of the very men who torment
the whole people by keeping them in slavery.

It is not for nothing that all the kings,
emperors, and presidents esteem discipline so
highly, are so afraid of any breach of discipline,
and attach the highest importance to reviews,
manoeuvres, parades, ceremonial marches, and
other such nonsense. They know that it all
maintains discipline, and that not only their
power but their very existence depends on
discipline.

Disciplined armies are the means by which
they, without using their own hands, accomplish
the greatest atrocities, the possibility of perpetrat-
ing which gives them power over the people.

And therefore the only means to destroy
Governments is not force, but it is the exposure of
this fraud. It is necessary people should under-
stand : First, that in Christendom there is no
need to protect the peoples, one from another ;
that the enmity of the peoples, one to another,
is produced by the Governments themselves ; and
that armies are only needed for the advantage
of the small number who rule ; for the people
it is not only unnecessary, but it is in the

no THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

highest degree harmful, serving as the instru-
ment to enslave them. Secondly, it is necessary
people should understand that the discipline
which is so highly esteemed by all the Govern-
ments, is the greatest crime that man can
commit, and is a clear indication of the crimin-
ality of the aims of Governments. Discipline
is the suppression of reason and of freedom in
man, and can have no aim other than prepara-
tion for the performance of crimes such as no
man can commit while in a normal condition.
It is not even needed for war when the war
is defensive and national, as the Boers have
recently shown. It is wanted, and wanted only,
for the purpose indicated by William n. : for the
perpetration of the greatest crimes fratricide
and parricide.

The terrible old man who sat on the traveller's
shoulders behaved as the Governments do. He
mocked him and insulted him, knowing that as
long as he sat on the traveller's neck the latter
was in his power.

And it is just this fraud, by means of which
a small number of unworthy people, called the
Government, have power over the people, and
not only impoverish them, but do what is the
most harmful of all actions pervert whole
generations from childhood upwards ; just this
terrible fraud which should be exposed in order
that the abolition of Government and of the

HOW TO ABOLISH GOVERNMENTS in

slavery that results from it may become pos-
sible.

The German writer, Eugen Schmitt, in the
newspaper Ohne Stoat, which he published in
Buda-Pesth, wrote an article that was profoundly
true and bold, not only in expression but in
thought. In it he showed that Governments,
justifying their existence on the ground that
they ensure a certain kind of safety to their
subjects, are like the Calabrian robber-chief who
collected a regular tax from all who wished to
travel in safety along the highways. Schmitt
was committed for trial for that article, but was
acquitted by the jury.

We are so hypnotised by the Governments
that such a comparison seems to us an exaggera-
tion, a paradox, or a joke ; but in reality it is
not a paradox or a joke. The only inaccuracy
in the comparison is that the activity of all
the Governments is many times more inhuman,
and, above all, more harmful, than the activity
of the Calabrian robber. The robber generally
plundered the rich ; the Governments generally
plunder the poor and protect those rich men who
assist in their crimes. The robber doing his
work risked his life, while the Governments risk
nothing, but base their whole activity on lies
and deception. The robber did not compel any-
one to join his band ; the Governments generally
enrol their soldiers by force. All who paid the

ii2 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

tax to the robber had equal security from
danger. But in the State, the more anyone
takes part in the organised fraud, the more he
receives not merely of protection but also of
reward. Most of all, the emperors, kings, and
presidents are protected (with their perpetual
bodyguards), and they can spend the largest
share of the money collected from the tax-pay-
ing subjects. Next in the scale of participation
in governmental crimes come the commanders-
in-chief, the ministers, the heads of police,
governors, and so on, down to the policemen,
who are least protected, and who receive the
smallest salaries of all. Those who do not take
any part in the crimes of Government, who
refuse to serve, to pay taxes, or to go to law,
are subjected to violence as among the robbers.
The robber does not intentionally vitiate people ;
but the Governments, to accomplish their ends,
vitiate whole generations from childhood to
manhood with false religious and patriotic
instruction. Above all, not even the most cruel
robber, no Stenka Razin, 1 no Cartouche, 2 can be
compared for cruelty, pitilessness, and ingenuity
in torturing, I will not say with the villain kings
notorious for their cruelty, John the Terrible,

1 The Cossack leader of a formidable insurrection in the
latter half of the seventeenth century. (Trans.).

3 The chief of a Paris band of robbers in the early years
of the eighteenth century. (Trans.).

HOW TO ABOLISH GOVERNMENTS 113

Louis XL, the Elizabeths, etc., but even with
the present constitutional and Liberal Govern-
ments, with their solitary cells, disciplinary
battalions, suppressions of revolts, and their
massacres in war.

Towards Governments, as towards Churches,
it is impossible to feel otherwise than with
veneration or aversion. Until a man has under-
stood what a Government is, and until he has
understood what a Church is, he cannot but feel
a veneration for those institutions. As long
as he is guided by them, his vanity makes it
necessary for him to think that what guides
him is something primal, great, and holy ; but
as soon as he understands that what guides him
is not something primal and holy, but that it is
a fraud carried out by unworthy people, who,
under the pretence of guiding him, make use of
him for their own personal ends, he cannot but
at once feel aversion towards these people ; and
the more important the side of his life that has
been guided, the more aversion will he feel.

People cannot but feel this when they have
understood what Governments are.

People must feel that their participation in
the criminal activity of Governments, whether
by giving part of their work, in the form of
money, or by direct participation in military
service, is not, as is generally supposed, an in-
different action, but besides being harmful to
8

ii4 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

oneself and to one's brothers, is a participation
in the crimes unceasingly committed by all
Governments, and a preparation for new crimes
which Governments, by maintaining disciplined
armies, are always preparing.

The age of veneration for Governments, not-
withstanding all the hypnotic influence they
employ to maintain their position, is, more and
more, passing away. And it is time for people
to understand that Governments not only are
not necessary, but are harmful and highly im-
moral institutions, in which an honest, self-
respecting man cannot and must not take part,
and the advantages of which he cannot and
should not enjoy.

And as soon as people clearly understand
that, they will naturally cease to take part in
such deeds, i.e. cease to give the Governments
soldiers and money. And as soon as a majority
of people ceases to do this, the fraud which
enslaves people will be abolished.

Only in this way can people be freed from
slavery.

CHAPTER XV

WHAT SHOULD EACH MAN DO ?

" BUT all these are general considerations, and,
whether they are correct or not, they are inap-
plicable to life," will be the remark made by
people accustomed to their position, and who do
not consider it possible, or who do not wish, to
change it.

"Tell us what to do, and how to organise
society ? " is what people of the well-to-do classes
usually say.

People of the well-to-do classes are so ac-
customed to their role of slave-owners that when
there is talk of improving the workers' condition,
they at once begin (like our serf -owners before
the emancipation) to devise all sorts of plans for
their slaves, but it never occurs to them that
they have no right to dispose of other people ;
and that, if they really wish to do good to
people, the one thing they can and should do is
to cease to do the evil they are now doing. And
the evil they do is very definite and clear. It is
not merely that they employ compulsory slave-

115

n6 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

labour, and do not wish to cease from employing
it, but that they also take part in establishing
and maintaining this compulsion of labour. That
is what they should cease to do.

The working people are also so perverted by
their compulsory slavery that it seems to most
of them that if their position is a bad one, it is
the fault of the masters, who pay them too little,
and who own the means of production. It does
not enter their heads that their bad position
depends entirely on themselves, and that, if only
they wish to improve their own and their
brothers' position, and not merely each to do
the best he can for himself, the great thing for
them to do is themselves to cease to do evil.
And the evil they do is that, desiring to improve
their material position by the very means which
have brought them into bondage, the workers
(for the sake of satisfying the habits they have
adopted), sacrificing their human dignity and
freedom, accept humiliating and immoral em-
ployment, or produce unnecessary and harmful
articles, and, above all, they maintain Govern-
ments, taking part in them by paying taxes,
and by direct service and thus they enslave
themselves.

In order that the state of things may be
improved, both the well-to-do classes and the
workers must understand that improvement can-
not be effected by safeguarding one's own

WHAT SHOULD EACH MAN DO? 117

interests. Service involves sacrifice, and there-
fore, if people really wish to improve the
position of their brother men, and not merely
their own, they must be ready not only to alter
the way of life to which they are accustomed,
and to lose those advantages which they have
held, but they must be prepared for an intense
struggle, not against Governments, but against
themselves and their families, and must be ready
to suffer persecution for non-fulfilment of the
demands of Government.

And, therefore, the reply to the question
What is it we must do ? is very simple, and
not merely definite, but always in the highest
degree applicable and practicable for each man,
though it is not what is expected by those who,
like people of the well-to-do classes, are fully
convinced that they are appointed to correct, not
themselves (they are already good), but to teach
and correct other people ; and by those who, like
the workmen, are sure that, not they (but only
the capitalists) are in fault that their position
is so bad, and think that things can only be put
right by taking from the capitalists the things
they use, and arranging so that all might make
use of those conveniences of life which are now
used only by the rich. The answer is very
definite, applicable, and practicable, for it de-
mands the activity of that one person, over
whom each of us has real, rightful, and un-

n8 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

questionable power, namely, oneself ; and it con-
sists in this, that if a man whether slave or
slave-owner really wishes to better not his
position alone, but the position of people in
general, he must not himself do those wrong
things which enslave him and his brothers. And
in order not to do the evil which produces
misery for himself and for his brothers, he should,
first of all, neither willingly, nor under compulsion,
take any part in Governmental activity, and should
therefore be neither a soldier, nor a Field- Marshal,
nor a Minister -of -State, nor a tax-collector, nor
a witness, nor an alderman, nor a juryman, nor
a governor, nor a Member of Parliament, nor, in
fact, hold any office connected with violence. That
is one thing.

Secondly, such a man should not voluntarily
pay taxes to Governments, either directly or in-
directly ; nor should he accept money collected l>y
taxes, either as salary, or as pension, or as a
reward, nor should he make use of Govern-
mental institutions supported by taxes collected
by violence from the people. That is the second
thing.

Thirdly, a man who desires not to promote his
own well-being alone, but to better the position of
people in general, should not appeal to Govern-
mental violence for the protection of his possessions
in land or in other things, nor to defend him and
his near ones ; but should only possess land and all

WHAT SHOULD EACH MAN DO? 119

products of Ms own or other people's toil, in so far
as others do not, claim them from him.

" But such an activity is impossible : to refuse
all participation in Governmental affairs, means
to refuse to live " is what people will say. " A
man who refuses military service will be im-
prisoned ; a man who does not pay taxes will be
punished, and the tax will be collected from his
property ; a man who, having no other means of
livelihood, refuses Government service will perish
of hunger, with his family ; the same will befall
a man who rejects Governmental protection for
his property and his person ; not to make use of
things that are taxed, or of Government institu-
tions, is quite impossible, as the most necessary
articles are often taxed ; and just in the same
way it is impossible to do without Government
institutions, such as the post, the roads, etc."

It is quite true that it is difficult for a man of
our times to stand aside from all participation in
Governmental violence. But the fact that not
everyone can so arrange his life as not to
participate, in some degree, in Governmental
violence, does not at all show that it is not
possible to free oneself from it more and more.
Not every man will have the strength to refuse
conscription (though there are, and will be, such
men), but each man can abstain from voluntarily
entering the army, the police force, or the
judicial or revenue service, and can give the prefer-

120 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

ence to a worse paid private service rather than
to a better paid public service. Not every man
will have the strength to renounce his landed
estates (though there are people who do that),
but every man can, understanding the wrongful-
ness of such property, diminish its extent. Not
every man can renounce the possession of capital
(there are some who do), or the use of articles
defended by violence, but each man can, by
diminishing his own requirements, be less and
less in need of articles which provoke other
people to envy. Not every official can renounce
his Government salary (though there are men
who prefer hunger to dishonest Governmental
employment), but everyone can prefer a smaller
salary to a larger one, for the sake of having
duties less bound up with violence ; not every
one can refuse to make use of Government
schools l (though there are some who do), but
everyone can give the preference to private
schools, and each can make less and less use
of articles that are taxed, and of Government
institutions.

Between the existing order, based on brute
force, and the ideal of a society based on reason-

1 With reference to schools, the circumstances are different
in Russia to what they are in England. Free England has
compulsory education ; Russia has not. But in Russia the
Government hinders the establishment of private schools, and
reduces even the universities to the position of Government
institutions, watched by spies. (Trans.).

WHAT SHOULD EACH MAN DO? 121

able agreement confirmed by custom, there are
an infinite number of steps, which mankind are
ascending, and the approach to the ideal is only
accomplished to the extent to which people free
themselves from participation in violence, from
taking advantage of it, and from being accustomed
to it.

We do not know, and cannot foresee, still less
like the pseudo-scientific men foretell, in what
way this gradual weakening of Governments
and emancipation of the people will come about ;
nor do we know what new forms man's life will
take as the gradual emancipation progresses, but
we do know certainly that the life of people
who, having understood the criminality and
harmfulness of the activity of Governments,
strive not to make use of them, or to take part
in them, will be quite different, and more in
accord with the law of life and with our own con-
sciences, than the present life, in which people
while themselves participating in Governmental
violence, and taking advantage of it, make a pre-
tence of struggling against it, and try to destroy
the old violence by new violence.

The chief thing is, that the present arrange-
ment of life is bad ; about that all are agreed.
The cause of the bad conditions and of the
existing slavery lies in the violence used by
Governments. There is only one way to
abolish Governmental violence ; it is that people

122 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

should abstain from participating in violence.
And, therefore, whether it be difficult or not to
abstain from participating in Governmental
violence, and whether the good results of such
abstinence will, or will not, be soon apparent,
are superfluous questions ; because to liberate
people from slavery there is only that one way,
and no other !

To what extent, and when, voluntary agree-
ment confirmed by custom will replace violence
in each society and in the whole world, will
depend on the strength and clearness of people's
consciousness, and on the number of individuals
who make this consciousness their own. Each of
us is a separate person, and each can be a parti-
cipator in the general movement of humanity by
his greater or lesser clearness of recognition of
the aim before us, or he can be an opponent of
progress. Each will have to make his choice ;
to oppose the will of God, building upon the
sands the unstable house of his brief and illusive
life, or to join in the eternal deathless move-
ment of true life in accord with God's will.

But perhaps I am mistaken, and the right
conclusions to draw from human history are not
these, and the human race is not moving towards
emancipation from slavery ; perhaps it can be
proved that violence is a necessary factor of pro-
gress, and that the State with its violence is a
necessary form of life, and that it will be worse

WHAT SHOULD EACH MAN DO? 123

for people if Governments are abolished, and if
the defence of our persons and property is
abolished.

Let us grant it to be so, and say that all the
foregoing reasoning is wrong ; but besides the
general considerations about the life of humanity,
each man has also to face the question of his
own life, and, notwithstanding any considerations
about the general laws of life, a man cannot do
what he admits to be, not merely harmful, but
wrong.

" Very possibly the reasonings showing the
State to be a necessary form of the development
of the individual, and Governmental violence to
be necessary for the good of society, can all be
deduced from history, and are all correct," each
honest and sincere man of our times will reply ;
" but murder is an evil, that I know more cer-
tainly than any reasonings ; by demanding that I
should enter the army, or pay for hiring and equip-
ping soldiers, or for buying cannons and building
ironclads, you wish to make me an accomplice
in murder, and that I cannot and will not be.
Neither do I wish to, nor can I, make use of money
you have collected from hungry people with
threats of murder ; nor do I wish to make use of
land or capital defended by you, because I know
that your defence of it rests on murder.

" I could do these things : when I did not
understand all their criminality, but when I

i2 4 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

have once seen it, I cannot avoid seeing it, and
can no longer take part in these things.

" I know that we are all so bound up by
violence, that it is difficult to avoid it altogether,
but I will, nevertheless, do all I can, not to take
part in it : I will not be an accomplice to it, and
will try not to make use of what is obtained and
defended by murder.

" I have but one life, and why should I, in
this brief life of mine, act contrary to the voice
of conscience and become a partner in your
abominable deeds ? I cannot, and I will not.

" And what will come of this I do not know.
Only, I think no harm can result from acting as
my conscience demands."

So, in our time, should each honest and sincere
man reply to all the arguments about the neces-
sity of Governments and of violence, and to every
demand or invitation to take part in them.

The conclusion to which general reasoning
should bring us, is thus confirmed to each in-
dividual, by that supreme and unimpeachable
judge the voice of conscience.

AN AFTERWORD.

" BUT this is again the same old sermon : on the
one hand, urging the destruction of the present
order of things without putting anything in its
place, on the other hand, exhorting to non-
action," is what many will say on reading what I
have written. " Governmental action is bad, so
is the action of the landowner, and of the man
of business ; equally bad is the activity of the
socialist, and of the revolutionary anarchists ; that
is to say, all real, practical activities are bad, and
only some sort of moral, spiritual, indefinite
activity, which brings everything to utter chaos
and inaction, is good." Thus, I know, many
serious and sincere people will think and speak !

What seems to people most disturbing in the
idea of no violence, is that property will not be
protected, and that each man will, therefore, be
able to take from another what he needs or
merely likes, and to go unpunished. To people
accustomed to the defence of property and person
by violence, it seems that without such defence
there will be perpetual disorder, a constant
struggle of everyone against everyone else.

125

126 THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES

I will not repeat what I have said elsewhere,
to show that the defence of property by violence
does not lessen, but increases, this disorder. But,
allowing that in the absence of defence disorder
may occur, what are people to do who have
understood the cause of the calamities from
which they are suffering ?

If we have understood that we are ill from
drunkenness, we must not (hoping to mend
matters by drinking moderately) continue to
drink, nor take medicines that shortsighted
doctors give us and continue drinking.

And it is the same with our social sickness.
If we have understood that we are ill because
some people use violence to others, we cannot
improve the position of society either by con-
tinuing to support the Governmental viol-
ence that exists, or by introducing a fresh kind
of revolutionary, or socialist violence. That
might have been done as long as the fundamental
cause of people's misery was not clearly seen.
But as soon as it has become indubitably clear
that people suffer from the violence done by
some to others, it becomes impossible to im-
prove the position by continuing the old violence,
or by introducing a new kind. As the sick man
suffering from alcoholism has but one way to be
cured by refraining from intoxicants which are
the cause of his illness, so there is only one
way to free men from the evil arrangement of

AN AFTERWORD 127

society, and that is to refrain from violence, the
cause of the suffering, from preaching violence,
and from in any way justifying violence.

And not only is this the only way to deliver
people from their ills, but we must also adopt it
because it coincides with the moral consciousness
of each individual man of our times. If a man
of our day has once understood that every
defence of property or person by violence is
obtained only by threatening to murder or by
murdering, he can no longer, with a quiet
conscience, make use of that which is obtained
by murder or by threats of murder, and still less
can he take part in the murders, or in threaten-
ing to murder. So that what is wanted to free
people from their misery is also needed for the
satisfaction of the moral consciousness of every
individual. And, therefore, for each individual
there can be no doubt that both for the general
good, and to fulfil the law of his life, he must
neither take part in violence, nor justify it, nor
make use of it.

THE END.

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